The Americans

There are three capital cities in the United States—Washington the political capital, New York the commercial, and Boston the intellectual capital. Everything in Washington is so completely subordinated to the political life that even the outward aspect of the city is markedly different from that of other American cities; buying and selling scarcely exist. In spite of its three hundred thousand inhabitants, one is reminded of Potsdam or Versailles; diplomats, legislators, and officials set the keynote. Washington is unique in the country, and no other large city tries to compete with it; unless, indeed, on a very small scale a few state capitals, like Albany, which are situated away from the commercial centres. Being unique, Washington remains isolated, and its influence is confined to the political sphere. As a result, there is a slight feeling of the unnatural, or even the unreal, about it; any movements emanating from Washington which are not political, hardly come to their full fruition. And although the city aspires to do, and does do, much for art, culture, and especially for science, its general initiative seems always to be lying under the weight of officialdom. It will never become the capital of intellect.

In a like way, New York is really informed by but a single impulse—the struggle for economic greatness. This is the meaning and the moral of its life. In this respect, New York is not, like Washington, unique. Chicago makes terrific strides in emulation of New York; and yet, so far as one now sees, the city of three million dwellers around the mouth of the Hudson will continue to be the economic centre of the New World. The wholesale merchants, the banker potentates, and the corporation attorneys set there the pace, as the senators and diplomats in Washington, and dominate all the activities of the metropolis. Through their influence New York has become the centre of luxury and fashion, and wealth the most powerful factor in its social life. All this cannot take place, and in such extreme wise, without affecting profoundly the other factors of culture. The commercial spirit can be detected in everything that comes from New York. On the surface it looks as if the metropolis of commerce and luxury might perhaps be usurping for itself a leading place in other matters. And it is true that the politics of New York are important, and that her newspapers have influence throughout the land. But yet a real political centre she will never become; new and great political impulses do not withstand her commercial atmosphere. New York is the chief clearinghouse for politics and industry; purely political ideas it transforms into commercial.

This is still more true of strictly intellectual movements. One must not be misled by the fact that there is no other city in the land where so many authors reside, where so many books and magazines are published, or so many works of art of all kinds are sold; or yet where so many apostles of reform lift up their voices. That the millions of inhabitants in New York constitute the greatest theatre for moral and social reforms, does not prove that the true springs of moral energy lie there. And the flourishing state of her literary and artistic activities proceeds, once more, from her economic greatness rather than from any real productive energy or intellectual fruitfulness. The commercial side of the intellectual life of America has very naturally centred itself in New York and there organized; but this outward connection between intellect and the metropolis of trade has very little to do with real intellectual initiative. Such association rather weakens than strengthens the true intellectual life; it subjects art to the influence of fashion, literature to the demands of commerce, and would make science bow to the exigencies of practical life; in short, it makes imminent all the dangers of superficiality. The intellectual life of New York may be outwardly resplendent, but it pays for this in depth; it brings into being no movements of profound significance, and therefore has no standing as a national centre in these respects. As the intellectual life of the political capital bears the stamp of officialdom, so is that of the commercial capital marked with the superficiality characteristic of trade and luxury. Intellectual life will originate new thoughts and spread them through the country only when it is earnest, pure, and deep; and informed, above all, with an ideal.

The capital of the intellectual life is Boston, and just as everything which comes out of Washington is tinged with politics, or out of New York with commerce, so are all the activities of Boston marked by an intellectual striving for ideal excellence. Even its commerce and politics are imbued with its ideals.

It is surprising how this peculiar feature of Boston strikes even the superficial observer. The European, who after the prescribed fashion lands at New York and travels to Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, and Niagara, and then winds up his journey through the United States in Boston, has in this last place generally the impression that he has already come back from the New World into the Old. The admirable traditions of culture, the thoroughly intellectual character of the society, the predominance of interests which are not commercial—in fact, even the quaint and picturesque look of the city—everything strikes him as being so entirely different from what his fancy had pictured, from its Old World point of view, as being specifically American. And no less is it different from what the rest of his experience of the New World has given him. Not until he knows the country more thoroughly does he begin to understand that really in this Yankee city the true spirit of the purely American life is embodied.

The American himself recognizes this leading position of Boston in the intellectual life of his country, although he often recognizes it with mixed feelings. He is fond, with the light irony of Holmes, to call Boston “the hub of the universe.” He likes to poke fun at the Boston woman by calling her a “blue-stocking,” and the comic papers habitually affirm that in Boston all cabbies speak Latin. But this does not obscure from him the knowledge that almost everything which is intellectually exalted and significant in this country has come from Boston, that Massachusetts, under the leadership of Boston, has become the foremost example in all matters of education and of real culture, and that there, on the ground of the oldest and largest academy of the country—Harvard University—the true home of New World ideals is to be found. And the intellectual pre-eminence of New England is no less recognizable in the representatives of its culture which Boston sends forth through the country; the artistic triumph of the Columbian Exposition may be ascribed to Chicago, but very many of the men who accomplished this work came from Massachusetts; the reform movement against Tammany belongs to the moral annals of New York, but those workers whose moral enthusiasm gained the victory are from New England. This latent impression, that all the best æsthetic and moral and intellectual impulses originate in New England, becomes especially deep the instant one turns one’s gaze into the past. The true picture is at the present day somewhat overlaid, because owing to the industrial development of the West the emigration from New England has taken on such large proportions that the essential traits of Massachusetts have been carried through the whole land. In past times, her peculiar pre-eminence was much more marked.

Whoever traces back the origins of American intellectual life must go to the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. Then the colonies in the Southern and Middle States were flourishing as well as the Northern colonies of New England; but only in these last was there any real initiative toward intellectual culture. In the year 1636, only eight years after the foundation of Boston, Harvard College was founded as the first, and for a long while the only, school of higher learning. And among the products of the printing-press which this country gave forth in the whole seventeenth century such an astonishing majority comes from New England that American literary history has no need to consider the other colonies of that time. The most considerable literary figure of the country at that time was Cotton Mather, a Bostonian. The eighteenth century perpetuated these traditions. The greatest thinker of the country, Jonathan Edwards, was developed at Harvard, and Benjamin Franklin was brought up in Boston. The literature of New England was the best which the country had so far produced, and when the time came for breaking away politically from England, then in the same way the moral energy and enthusiasm of Boston took front rank.

Not until these days of political independence did the true history of the free and independent intellectual life of America begin. Now one name followed close on another, and most of the great ones pertained to New England. Poets like Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were Bostonians; Whittier and Hawthorne also sprang from the soil of New England. Here, too, appeared the intellectually leading magazines; in the first half of the century the North American Review, in the second half the Atlantic Monthly. Here the religious movement of Unitarianism worked itself out, and here was formed that school of philosophers in whose midst stood the shining figure of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here sounded the most potent words against slavery; here Parker, Garrison, Phillips, and Sumner poured forth their charges against the South into the midst of a public morally aroused. Here, also, first flourished the quiet work of scientific investigation. Since the day when Ticknor and Everett studied in Göttingen in the year 1815, there sprang up in Massachusetts, more than anywhere else, the custom which caused young American scholars to frequent German schools of higher learning. The historians Prescott, Sparks, Bancroft, Parkman, and Motley were among this number. Here in Boston was the classic ground for the cultivation of serious music, and here was founded the first large public library. And all these movements have continued down to this day. None of the traditions are dead; and any one who is not deceived by superficial impressions knows that the most essential traits of Boston and New England are the ones which, in respect to intellectual life, lead the nation. Quite as the marble Capitol at Washington is the symbol of the political power of America, and the sky-scrapers of lower Broadway are the symbol of America’s economic life, so we may say the elm-shaded college yard of Harvard is the symbol of American intellectual capacity and accomplishment.

It may seem astonishing at first that a single vicinity can attain such eminence, and especially that so small a part of the Union is able to impress its character on the whole wide land. The phenomenon, however, becomes almost a matter of course, if we put before ourselves how this world-power slowly grew from the very smallest beginnings, and how this growth did not take place by successive increments of large and compact masses of people who had their own culture and their own independent spirit, but took place by the continual immigration of wanderers who were detached and isolated, and who joined themselves to that which was already here, and so became assimilated. Then, as soon as a beginning had been made, and in a certain place a specific expression had been given to intellectual life, this way of thinking and this general attitude necessarily became the prevailing ones, and in this way spread abroad farther and farther. If in the seventeenth century, instead of the little New England states, the Southern colonies, say, had developed a characteristic and independent intellectual life, then by the same process of constant assimilation the character and thought of Virginia might have impressed itself on the whole nation as have the character and thought of Massachusetts. Yet it was by no means an accident that the spirit which was destined to be most vital did not proceed from the pleasure-loving Virginians, but rather came from the severely earnest settlers of the North.

The way of thinking of those Northern colonists can be admirably characterized by a single word—they were Puritans. The Puritan spirit influenced the inner life of Boston Bay in the seventeenth century, and consequently the inner life of the whole country down to our time, more deeply and more potently than any other factor. The Puritanical spirit signifies something incomparably precious—it is much more admirable than its detractors dream of; and yet at the same time, it carries with it its decided limitations. For nearly three hundred years the genius of America has nourished itself on these virtues and has suffered by these limitations. That which the Puritans strove for was just what their name signifies—purity; purity in the service of God, purity of character, and, in an evil time, purity of life. Filled with the religious doctrines of Calvinism, that little band of wanderers had crossed the ocean in spite of the severest trials, in order to find free scope for their Puritan ideals; had left that same England where, some time later under Cromwell, they were to achieve a victory, although a short and after all insignificant one. They much more cared for the spotlessness of their faith than for any outward victory, and every impulse of their devout and simple lives was informed by their convictions. Under these circumstances it was no accident that here the intellectual and moral ideals were not obscured by any economic or political preoccupations; but from the very outset were accounted in themselves of prime importance. Harvard College was founded as a school for the Puritan clergy, and almost the entire American literature, which is to say the literature of New England, of the seventeenth century is purely religious, or at any rate is thoroughly permeated with the Calvinistic way of thought.

Of course, externally this is all entirely changed, and it is almost a typical example of this transformation, that Harvard, once a seminary for ministers, to-day prepares not one-fiftieth part of its five thousand students for the clerical calling. Indeed, as early as the year 1700, Yale University was founded in Connecticut, largely in the aim of creating a fortress for the old faith, because Harvard had become too much a place of free thought; and the great scholar of Harvard, the preacher Jonathan Edwards, went away from Boston in anger because it seemed to him, even in the eighteenth century, that the old Calvinistic traditions had been lost. And then finally, in the nineteenth century, appeared Unitarianism—a creed which became the most energetic enemy of Calvinism. These changes and disruptions were, however, rather an internal matter. They were actually nothing but small differences within the Puritan community. From the meagre days of the Pilgrim Fathers down to the time when Emerson in rhapsodic flights preached the ethical idealism of Fichte, and Longfellow wrote his “Psalm of Life,” the old Puritan spirit remained predominant.

One fundamental note sounded through the whole. Life was not to be lived for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of duty. Existence got its sense and value only in ethical endeavour; self-perfection was the great duty which took precedence over all others. Among the particularly dogmatic tenets of the Calvinistic theology this self-searching became, in the last resort, perhaps a somewhat dispiriting searching after inner signs by which God was expected to show somewhat arbitrarily his favour. More broadly taken, however, it signified rather a continual searching of the conscience—a conscious suppression of impure, of worldly, and of selfish impulses; and so in effect it was an untiring moral purification. And if in this theological atmosphere it appeared as if God had led a singularly large number of predestined spirits together into the New England colonies, the reason was obviously this—that in such a community of earnest, self-searching characters a moral purity developed such as was to be found nowhere in the wild turmoil of the Old World. When the entire life is so permeated by ethical ideals, there indeed the nobler part of man’s nature cannot be conquered by lower instincts or by the sordid demands of every-day life.

Such a place could not fail to be a favourable environment for any intellectual undertakings. There serious books were more welcome than the merely amusing ones which flourished in the rest of the colonies. In New England more was done for education, the development of law and the service of God, than for any outward show or material prosperity. In short, the life of the intellect throve there from the very outset. And yet of course this spirit of culture necessarily took a turn very different from what it had been in the mother land, different from what it was on the Continent, and different from what it would have been if the Southern colonies had been intellectually dominant.

For the Puritan, absolutely the whole of culture was viewed from the moral point of view. But the moral judgment leads always to the individual; neither in the physical nor in the psychical world can anything be found which has an ethical value except the good will of the individual. No work of culture has any value in itself; it becomes ethically significant only in its relation to the individual will, and all intellectual life has ethically a single aim—to serve the highest development of the individual. From this point of view, therefore, science, poetry, and art have no objective value: for the Puritan, they are nothing to accept and to make himself subordinate to; but they are themselves subordinate means merely toward that one end—the perfection of the man. Life was a moral problem, for which art and science became important only in so far as they nourished the inner growth of every aspirant. In the language of the newer time we might say that a community developed under Puritan influences cared considerably more for the culture of its individual members than for the creation of things intellectual, that the intellectual worker did not set out to perfect art and science, but aimed by means of art and science to perfect himself.

Of course there must be some reciprocal working between the general body of culture and the separate personalities, but the great tendency had to be very different from that which it would have been had the chief emphasis been laid on æsthetic or intellectual productions as such. In Europe during the decisive periods the starting-point has been and to-day is, the objective; and this has only secondarily come to be significant for the subjective individual life. But in Puritan America the soul’s welfare stood in the foreground, and only secondarily was the striving for self-perfection, self-searching, and self-culture made to contribute to the advance of objective culture. As a consequence individual characters have had to be markedly fine even at a time in which all creative achievements of enduring significance were very few. Just in the opposite way the history of the culture of non-puritanical Europe has shown the greatest creative achievements at the very times when personal morals were at their lowest ebb.

But the spirit of self-perfection can have still an entirely different source. In ethical idealism the perfection of personality is its own end; but this perfection of the individual may also be a means to an end, an instrument for bringing about the highest possible capacity for achievement in practical life. This is the logic of utilitarianism. For utilitarianism as well as for Puritan idealism the growth of science and art, and the development of moral institutions, are nothing in themselves, but are significant only as they work backward on the minds of the individuals. Idealism demands the intellectual life for the sake of the individual soul’s welfare, utilitarianism for the sake of the individual’s outward success. A greater antithesis could hardly be thought of; and nevertheless the desire for self-perfection is common to both, and for both the increase of the national products of culture are at the outset indifferent. It is clear that both of these tendencies in their sociological results will always reach out far beyond their initial aims. Puritanism and utilitarianism, although they begin with the individual, nevertheless must bear their fruits in the whole intellectual status of the nation. Ethical idealism aims not only to receive, but also to give. To be sure, it gives especially in order to inspire in others its own spirit of self-perfection, but in order so to inspire and so to work it must give expression to its inner ideals by the creation of objects of art and science. Utilitarianism, on the contrary, must early set such a premium on all achievements which make for prosperity that in the same way again the individual, from purely utilitarian motives, is incited to bring his thought to a creative issue. The intellectual life of the nation which is informed with Puritan and utilitarian impulses, will therefore, after a certain period, advance to a new and national stage of culture; but the highest achievements will be made partly in the service of moral ideals, partly in the service of technical culture. As the result of the first tendency, history, law, literature, philosophy, and religion will come to their flowering; in consequence of the second tendency, science and technique.

In modern Continental Europe, both these tendencies have been rather weakly developed. From the outset idealism has had an intellectual and æsthetic bias. Any great moral earnestness has been merely an episode in the thought of those nations; and in the same way, too, utilitarianism has played really a subordinate rôle in their intellectual life, because the desire for free initiative has never been a striking feature in the intellectual physiognomy. The love of truth, the enjoyment of beauty, and the social premiums for all who minister to this love and pleasure have been in Continental Europe more potent factors in the national intellectual life than either ethical idealism or practical utilitarianism. And it is only because of its steady assimilation of all European immigrants that the Puritan spirit of the New England colonies has become the fundamental trait of the country, and that moral earnestness has not been a mere episode also in the life of America.

There is no further proof necessary that, along with idealism, utilitarianism has in fact been an efficient factor in all intellectual activities of America. Indeed, we have very closely traced out how deeply the desire for self-initiative has worked on the population and been the actual spring of the economic life of all classes. But for the American it has been also a matter of course that the successful results of initiative presuppose, in addition to energy of character, technical training and the best possible liberal education. Here and there, to be sure, there appears a successful self-made man—a man who for his lack of making has only himself to thank—and he comes forward to warn young people to be wary of the higher culture, and to preach to them that the school of practical life is the sole high-road to success. But the exemplary organization of the great commercial corporations is itself a demonstration against any such fallacious paradoxes. Precisely there the person with the best training is always placed at the head, and the actual results of American technique would be still undreamt of if the American had preferred, before the solid intellectual mastery of his problems, really nothing but energy or “dash” or, say, mere audacity. The issues which really seriously interest the American are not between the adherents of culture and the adherents of mere push, undeterred by any culture; the material value of the highest possible intellectual culture has come to be a dogma. The real issues are mainly even to-day those between the Puritanical and utilitarian ideals of self-perfection. Of course those most in the heat of battle are not aware of this; and yet when in the thousandfold discussions the question comes up whether the higher schools and colleges should have fixed courses of instruction for the sake of imparting a uniform and general culture, or whether on the other hand specialization should be allowed to step in and so to advance the time for the technical training, then the Puritans of New England and the utilitarians of the Middle States are ranged against each other.

In fact, it is the Middle, and a little later on the Western, States, where along with the tremendous development of the instinct of individual initiative the pressure for the utilitarian exploitation of the higher intellectual powers has been most lively. Also this side of the American spirit has not sprung up to-day nor yesterday; and its influence is neither an immoral nor a morally indifferent force. Utilitarianism has decidedly its own ethics. It is the robust ethics of the Philistine, with its rather trivial references to the greatest good of the greatest number and citations of the general welfare. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, preached no mean morality, along with his labours for politics and science; but his words, “Honesty is the best policy,” put morality on a level with the lightning-rod which he invented. Both are means toward human prosperity. Although born and bred in Boston, Franklin did not feel himself at home there, where for the best people life was thought to be “a trembling walk with God.” For him Philadelphia was a more congenial field of activity. To-day there is no single place which is specially noted for its utilitarian turn of mind. It is rather a matter of general dissemination, for the influence of the entire Western population goes in this direction. But no one should for a moment imagine that this utilitarian movement has overcome or destroyed the Puritan spirit. The actual state of the national culture can be understood only as a working together of these two types of the spirit of self-perfection; and even to-day, the Puritan spirit is the stronger—the spirit of New England is in the lead.

All that we have so far spoken of relates to that which is distinctly of national origin; over and above this there is much which the American has adopted from other nations. The most diverse factors work to make this importation from foreign thought more easy. The wealth and the fondness for travel of the American, his craze for collections, and his desire to have in everything the best—this in addition to the uninterrupted stream of immigration and much else—have all brought it about that anything which is foreign is only too quickly adopted in the national culture. Not until very lately has a more or less conscious reaction against this sort of thing stepped in, partly through the increased strengthening of the national consciousness, but more specially through the surprisingly quick rise of native achievement. The time for imitation in architecture has gone by and the prestige of the English romance is at an end. And yet to-day English literature, French art, and German music still exercise here their due and potent influence.

Now, in addition to these influences which spring from the culture of foreign nations, come finally those impulses which are not peculiar to any one nation, but spring up in every country out of the lower instincts and pleasures. Everywhere in the world mere love of diversion tries to step in and to usurp the place of æsthetic pleasure. Everywhere curiosity and sensational abandon are apt to undermine purely logical interests, and everywhere a mere excitability tries to assume the rôle of moral ardour. Everywhere the weak and trivial moral, æsthetic, and intellectual appeals of the variety stage may come to be preferred over the serious appeals of the drama. It is said that this tendency, which was always deeply rooted in man’s nature, is felt more noticeably in our nervous and excitable times than it was in the old days. In a similar way one may say that it shows out still stronger in America than it does in other countries. The reason for this is clear. Political democracy is responsible for part of it; for in the name of that equality which it postulates, it instinctively lends more countenance to the æsthetic tastes, the judgment, and the moral inspiration of the butcher, the baker and candlestick-maker than is really desirable if one has at heart the development of absolute culture. Perhaps an even more important factor is the purely economic circumstance that in America the masses possess a greater purchasing power than in any other country, and for this reason are able to exert a more immediate influence on the intellectual life of the land. The great public is not more trivial in the United States than elsewhere; it is rather, as in every democracy, more mature and self-contained; but in America this great public is more than elsewhere in the material position to buy great newspapers, and to support theatres; and is thus able to exert a degrading influence on the intellectual level of both newspaper and theatre.

In this way, then, the tendency of the lower classes toward those things which are trivial may sometimes conceal the fine traits in the picture of the national intellectual life; just as the readiness for imitation may, for a time, bring in many a foreign trait. But nevertheless, there is in fact a clearly recognizable, a free and independent intellectual life, which everywhere reveals the opposition or the balance between Puritanism and utilitarianism, and which is everywhere dominated by that single wish which is common both to Puritans and to utilitarians—the desire for the best possible development of the individual, the desire for self-perfection.

Since, however, it remains a somewhat artificial abstraction to pick out a single trait—even if that is the most typical—from the intellectual make-up of the nation, so of course it is understood from the outset that all the other peculiarities of the American work together with this one to colour and shape his real intellectual life. Everywhere, for instance, one notes the easily kindled enthusiasm of the American and his inexhaustible versatility, his religious temperament and his strongly marked feeling of decorum, his lively sense of justice and his energy, and perhaps most of all his whimsical humour. Each one of these admirable traits involves some corresponding failing. It is natural that impetuous enthusiasm should not make for that dogged persistence which so often has brought victory to various German intellectual movements; so, too, a nice feeling for form grows easily impatient when it is a question of intellectual work requiring a broad and somewhat careless handling. Devotion to the supersensuous is inclined to lead to superstition and mysticism, while a too sensitive feeling for fair play may develop into hysterical sympathy for that which is merely puny; versatility, as is well known, is only too apt to come out in fickle dilettante activities, and the humour that bobs up at every moment destroys easily enough the dignity of the most serious occasion. And yet all this, whether good or bad, is a secondary matter. The spirit of self-perfection remains the central point, and it must be always from this point that we survey the whole field.

A social community which believes its chief duty to be the highest perfection of the individual will direct its main attentions to the church and the school. The church life in America is, for political reasons, almost entirely separated from the influence of the state; but the force with which every person is drawn into some church circle has not for this reason lost, but rather gained, strength. The whole social machine is devised in the interests of religion, and the impatience of the sects and churches against one another is slight indeed as compared with the intolerance of the churches as a whole against irreligion. The boundaries are drawn as widely as possible, so that ethical culture or even Christian Science may be included under the head of religion; but countless purely social influences make strongly toward bringing the spirit of worship in some wise into every man’s life, so that an hour of consecration precedes the week of work, and every one in the midst of his earthly turmoil heeds the thought of eternity, in whatever way he will. And these social means are even stronger than any political ones could be.

There is very much which contributes to deepen the religious feeling of the people and to increase the efficiency of the churches. The very numerousness of the different sects is not the least factor in this direction, for it allows every individual conscience to find somewhere its peculiar religious satisfaction. An additional impulse is the high position which woman occupies, for she is more religiously endowed than man. And yet another factor is the many social functions which the churches have taken on themselves. In this last there is much that may seem to the stranger too secular: the church which is at the same time a club, a circulating library, and a place to lounge in, seems at first sight to lose something of its dignity; but just because it has woven itself in by such countless threads to the web of daily life, it has come to pass that no part of the social fabric is quite independent of it. Of course the external appearance of a large city does not strongly indicate this state of things; but the town and country on the other hand give evidence of the strong religious tendency of the population, even to the superficial observer; and he will not understand the Americans if he leaves out of account their religious inwardness. The influence of religion is the only one which is stronger than that of politics itself, and the accomplished professional politicians are sharp to guide their party away from any dangerous competition with that factor.

The church owes its power more or less to the unconscious sentiments in the soul of the people, whereas the high position and support of the public school is the one end toward which the conscious volition of the entire nation is bent with firmest determination. One must picture to one’s self the huge extent of the thinly populated country, the incomparable diversity of the population which has come in, bringing many differences of race and language, and finally the outlay of strength which has been necessary to open up the soil to cultivation, in order to have an idea of what huge labours it has taken to plant the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific with a thick sowing of schools. The desire for the best possible school system is for the American actually more than a social duty—it has become a passion; and although here and there it may have gone astray, it has never been afraid of any difficulty.

The European who is accustomed to see the question of education left to the government can hardly realize with what intensity this entire population participates in the solution of theoretical problems and in the overcoming of practical difficulties. No weekly paper or magazine and no lecture programme of any association of thinking men could be found in which questions of nurture and education are not treated. Pedagogical publications are innumerable, and the number of those who are technically informed is nearly identical with the number of those who have brought up children. The discussions in Germany over, we may say, high schools and technical schools, over modern and ancient languages, or the higher education of women, interest a relatively small circle as compared with similar discussions in America. The mere fact that this effort toward the best school instruction has so deeply taken hold of all classes of society, and that it leads all parties and sects and all parts of the country to a united and self-conscious struggle forward is in itself of the highest value for the education of the whole people.

In the broad basis of the public school is built a great system of higher instruction, and the European does not easily find the right point of view from which to take this. The hundreds of colleges, universities, professional schools, and polytechnics seem to the casual observer very often like a merely heterogeneous and disordered collection of separate institutions, because there seems to be no common standard, no general level, no common point of view, and no common end; in short, there seems to be no system. And nevertheless, there is at the bottom of it all an excellent system. It is here that one finds the most elaborate and astonishing achievement of the American spirit, held together in one system by the principle of imperceptible gradations; and no other organization, specially no mere imitation of foreign examples, could so completely bring to expression the American desire for self-perfection.

The topics of school and university would not make up one-half of the history of American popular education. In no other country of the world is the nation so much and so systematically instructed outside of the school as in America, and the thousand forms in which popular education is provided for those who have grown beyond the schools, are once more a lively testimony to the tireless instinct for personal perfection. Evening schools, summer schools, university extension courses, lecture institutes, society classes, and debating clubs, all work together to that end; and to omit these would be to give no true history of American culture. The background of all this, however, is the great national stock of public library books, from which even the poorest person can find the best books and study them amid the most delightful surroundings.

The popular educational libraries, together with the amazingly profuse newspaper and magazine literature, succeed in reaching the whole people; and, in turn, these institutions would not have become so large as they are if the people themselves had not possessed a strong desire for improvement. This thirst for reading is again nothing new; for Hopkinson, who was acquainted with both England and America in the middle of the eighteenth century, reported with surprise the difference in this respect between the two countries. And since that time the development has gone on and on until to-day the magazines are printed by the hundreds of thousands, and historical romances in editions of half a million copies; while public libraries exist not only in every small city, but even in the villages, and those in the large cities are housed in buildings which are truly monuments of architecture. As the influence of books has grown, the native literature has increased and the arts of modelling and sculpture have come forward at an equal pace, as means of popular culture. Museums have arisen, orchestras been established, the theatre developed, and an intellectual life has sprung up which is ready to measure itself against the best that European culture has produced. But the real foundation of this is even to-day not the creative genius, but the average citizen, in his striving after self-perfection and culture.

Once every year the American people go through a period of formal meditation and moral reflection. In the month of June all the schools close. Colleges and universities shut their doors for the long summer vacation; and then, at the end of the year of study, according to an old American custom, some serious message is delivered to those who are about to leave the institutions. To make such a farewell speech is accounted an honour, depending, of course, on the rank of the institution, and the best men in the country are glad to be asked. Thus it happens that, in the few weeks of June, hundreds of the leading men—scholars, statesmen, novelists, reformers, politicians, officials, and philanthropists—vie with one another in impressing on the youth the best, deepest, and most inspiring sentiments; and since these speeches are copied in the newspapers and magazines, they are virtually said to the whole people. The more important utterances generally arouse discussions in the columns of the newspapers, and so the month of June comes to be a time of reflection and meditation, and of a certain refreshment of inspiration and a revival of moral strength. Now, if one looks over these speeches, one sees that they generally are concerned with one of two great themes. Some of them appeal to the youth, saying; Learn and cultivate yourselves, for this is the only way in which you will arrive at becoming useful members of society: while the others urge; Cultivate yourselves, for there is in life nothing more precious than a full and harmonious development of the soul. The latter sentiment is that of the Puritan, while the former is that of the utilitarian. And yet the individualistic tendency is in both cases the same. In both cases youth is urged to find its goal in the perfection of the individual.

The Dutch population of New Amsterdam started a school system in the year 1621. The first public Latin school was founded in Boston in the year 1635. The other colonies soon followed. Clearly the English governor of Virginia, Berkeley, had not quite grasped the spirit of the New World, when at about that time he wrote home, that, thank God, no public schools and no printing-press existed here, and when he added his hope that they would not be introduced for a hundred years, since learning brings irreligion and disobedience into the world, and the printing-press disseminates them and fights against the best intentions of the government. For that matter it was precisely Virginia which was the first colony, even before Boston and New York, to consider the question of education. As early as 1619 the treasurer of the Virginia Company had proposed, in the English Parliament, that 15,000 acres of land should be set aside in the interests of a school for higher education. The English churches became interested in the plan, and an abundant supply of money was got together. Ground and buildings had been procured for lower and higher instruction and all was in working order, when in 1622 the fearful Indian war upset everything. The buildings were destroyed, and all thought of public education was for a long time given up. This is how that condition came about which so well pleased Governor Berkeley. But this mishap to the Virginia colony shows at once how the American system of education has not been able to progress in any systematic way, but has suffered frequent reverses through war or political disturbance. And it has developed in the different parts of the country at a very different pace, sometimes even in quite different directions. It was not until after the Civil War—that is, within the last thirty years—that these differences have to a large extent been wiped out. It is only to-day that one can speak of a general American system. The outsider will, therefore, come to a better understanding of the American educational system if he begins his study with conditions as they are to-day, for they are more unified and therefore easier to understand, than if he were to try to understand how the present has historically come from the complicated and rather uninteresting past.

So we shall not ask how the educational system has developed, but rather what it is to-day and what it aims to be. Even the present-day conditions may easily lead a German into some confusion, because he is naturally inclined to compare them with the conditions at home, and such a comparison is not always easy. Therefore, we must picture to ourselves first of all the fundamental points in the system, and describe its principal variations from the conditions in Germany. A few broad strokes will suffice for a first inspection.

The unit of the system in its completest form is a four years’ course of instruction. For the easier survey we may think of a boundary drawn at what in Germany would be between the Obersekunda and Prima of a Gymnasium or Realschule. Now, three such units of the system lie before and two after this line of demarcation. The son of a well-to-do family, who is to study medicine in Harvard University, will probably reach this line of demarcation in his eighteenth year. If he is advanced according to the normal scheme he will have entered a primary school at six years of age, the grammar school at ten, and the high school at fourteen. Thus he will complete a twelve years’ course in the public schools. Now he crosses our line of demarcation in his eighteenth year and enters college. And as soon as he has finished his four years’ course in college he begins his medical studies in the university, and he is twenty-six years old when he has finished. If we count in two years of early preparation in the kindergarten, we shall see that the whole scheme of education involves twenty-two years of study. Now, it is indeed possible that our young medical student will have progressed somewhat more rapidly; perhaps he will have reached the high school after six instead of eight years of study; perhaps he will finish his college course in three years, and it may be that he will never have gone to kindergarten. But we have at first to concern ourselves with the complete plan of education, not with the various changes and abbreviations of it, which are very properly allowed and even favoured.

The line which we call the great boundary is the time when the lad enters college. Now, what is the great significance of this moment? The German, who thinks in terms of Gymnasium and Universität, is almost sure to fall into a misapprehension; for college is neither the one nor the other. So far as the studies themselves go, it coincides rather well with the Prima of the Gymnasium and the first two or three semesters in the philosophical faculty of the German university. And yet even this by no means tells one what a college really is. Above all, it does not explain why the American makes the chief division at the time of entering college, while the German makes it when he enters the medical or law school. This needs to be explained most clearly, because very important factors are here involved, which bear on the future of American civilization. And so we must give especial attention to college and the professional schools. But that discussion is to be reserved for the chapter on the universities. For the present, we have only to deal with the system of instruction in those schools which prepare for college.

And so, leaving the kindergarten out of the question, we shall deal with those three institutions which we have called primary, grammar, and high schools. Usually, the first two of these are classed together as one eight years’ course of training. The European will be struck at once that in this system there is only one normal plan of public education. The future merchant, who goes to the high school and ends his studies in the eighteenth year, has to follow the same course of study in the primary and grammar schools as the peasant and labourer who studies only until his fourteenth year, and then leaves school to work in the field or the factory. And this young merchant, although he goes into business when he is eighteen years old, pursues exactly the same studies as the student who is later to go to college and the university. Now in fact, in just this connection the actual conditions are admirably adapted to the most diverse requirements; the public schools find an admirable complement in private schools; and, more than that, certain very complicated differentiations have been brought about within the single school, in order to overcome the most serious defects of this uniformity. Nevertheless, the principle remains; the system is uniform, and the American himself finds therein its chief merit.

The motive for this is clear. Every one, even the most humble, should find his way open; every one must be able to press on as far as his own intelligence permits; in other words—words which the American pedagogue is very fond of uttering—the public school is to make the spirit of caste impossible. It is to wipe out the boundaries between the different classes of society, and it is to see to it, that if the farmer’s lad of some remote village feels within himself some higher aspiration, and wants to go beyond the grammar school to the high school and even to college, he shall find no obstacle in his way. His advance must not be impeded by his suddenly finding that his entrance into the high school would need some different sort of previous training.

This general intermingling of the classes of society is thought to be the panacea of democracy. The younger generations are to be removed from all those influences which keep their parents apart, and out of all the classes of society the sturdiest youth are to be free of all prejudice and free to rise to the highest positions. Only in this wise can new sound blood flow through the social organism; only so can the great evils incident to the formation of castes which have hindered old Europe in its mighty progress be from the very outset avoided. The classic myth relates of the hero who gained his strength because he kissed the earth. In this way the American people believe that they will become strong only by returning with every fresh generation to the soil, and if the German Gymnasia were a hundred times better than they are, and if they were able to prepare a boy from early childhood for the highest intellectual accomplishment, America would still find them unsuited to her needs, because from the outset they are designed for only a small portion of the people, and for this reason they make it almost impossible for the great mass of boys to proceed to the universities from the ordinary public schools.

All of this is the traditional confession of belief of the pedagogue of the New World. But now since America, in the most recent times, has nevertheless begun to grow in its social structure considerably more like antiquated Europe, and sees itself less and less able to overcome the tendencies to a spirit of caste, so a sort of mild compromise has been made between the democratic creed and aristocratic tendencies, especially in the large cities of the East. Nevertheless, any one who keeps his eyes open will admit that, so far as the public school goes, intellectual self-perfection is in every way favoured, so that every single child of the people may rise as high as he will. Grammar school leads to the high school, and the high school leads to college.

There is another factor which is closely related to the foregoing. Education is free and obligatory. In olden times there was more the tendency for the parents of the children, rather than for the general taxpayer, to pay for the maintenance of the schools. Indeed, there were times in which the remission of the special school tax was considered almost an act of charity, which only the poorest of the parents would accept. But now it is quite different. The school system knows no difference between rich and poor, and it is a fundamental principle that the support of the schools is a matter for the whole community. The only question is in regard to the high school, since after all only a small percentage of school children comes as far as the high school; and it is unjust, some say, to burden the general taxpayer with the expenses of such school.

Nevertheless, on this point the opinions of those have won who conceive that it is the duty of the community to nurture any effort toward self-culture, even in the poorest child. The chief motive in olden times, wherefore the expenses of the schools were paid by all, was that the school was leading toward religion; to-day the official motive for the application of taxes to the maintenance of schools is the conviction that only an educated and cultivated people can rule itself. The right to vote, it is said, presupposes the right to an education by means of which every citizen becomes able to read the papers of the day and to form his own independent opinion on public matters. But since every public school is open also to the daughters of the citizens who possibly want the right to vote, but do not so far have it, it becomes clear that the above-mentioned political motive is not the whole of the matter. It is enough for technical discussions of taxation, but what the community is really working for is the greatest possible number of the most highly educated individuals. Free instruction is further supplemented in various states—as, for instance, in Massachusetts—by supplying text-books gratis. Some other states go so far as to supply the needy children with clothing. The obligatory character of education goes with the fact that it is free. In this respect, too, the laws of different states are widely divergent. Some require seven, others eight, still others even nine years, of school training. And the school year itself is fixed differently in different states.

These differences between the states point at once to a further fact which has been characteristic of the American school system from the very beginning. Responsibility for the schools rests at the periphery; and in extremely happy fashion the authority is so divided that all variations, wherever they occur, are adaptations to local conditions; and nevertheless unity is preserved. A labile equilibrium of the various administrative factors is brought about by harmonious distribution of the authority, and this is, in all departments of public life, the peculiar faculty of the Americans.

The federal government, as such, has no direct influence on education. The tirelessly active Bureau of Education at Washington, which is under the direction of the admirable pedagogue, Mr. Harris, is essentially a bureau for advice and information and for the taking of statistics. The legal ordinances pertaining to school systems is a matter for the individual state, and the state again leaves it to the individual community, within certain limits of course and under state supervision, to build schools and to organize them, to choose their teachers, their plans of education, and their school-books. And at every point here, exactly as in the striking example of the federal Constitution, the responsibility is divided between the legislative and the executive bodies. The state inspector of schools is co-ordinate with the state legislature, and the school inspector of a city or a country district, who is elected now by the mayor, now by the council, now perhaps directly by the community, is a sort of technical specialist with considerable discretionary power; he is co-ordinated to the school committee, which is elected by the community, and which directs the expenditures and confirms all appointments.

The responsibility for the moral and intellectual standards, for the practical conditions, and for the financial liabilities incurred by every school, rests therefore immediately with the community, which has to pay for their support, and whose children are to derive advantage. And nevertheless, the general oversight of the state sees to it that neither whimsicality nor carelessness abuses this right, nor departs too widely from approved traditions. These authorities are further supplemented in that the state legislature is more or less able to make up for differences between rich and poor districts and between the city and the country, besides directly carrying on certain normal schools in which the teachers for the elementary and grammar schools are trained.

Very great and very diverse advantages are the immediate outcome of this administrative system. Firstly, an interest in the well-being of the schools is developed in every state, city, and town, and the spirit of self-perfection is united with the spirit of self-determination. Secondly, there is a good deal of free play for local differences—differences between states and differences within the state. Nothing would have been more unsuitable than in this whole tremendous territory to institute a rigidly fixed school system, as say by some federal laws or some interstate agreements. If there were the same educational provisions for the negro states of the South and for the Yankee states of New England, for the thickly settled regions of the East and the prairies of the West, these provisions would be either empty words or else they would tend to drag down the more highly educated parts of the country to the level of the lowest districts. The German who objects to this on the ground of uniformity, does so because he is too apt to think of the great similarity which exists between the different sections of Germany. The only proper basis for a comparison, however, would be his taking Europe as a whole into consideration.

If now the outward unity of this system which we have described is nevertheless to be maintained, it is absolutely necessary that this form shall be filled with very different contents. And this introduction of diversity is intrusted to the state legislatures and local authorities, who are familiar with the special conditions. In this way the so-called school year in the school ordinances of a rich state may be about twice as long as in another state whose poorer population is perhaps not able entirely to do without the economies of child labour. But the differences between the schools take particularly such a form that the attainments of the different schools, corresponding to the culture and prosperity of the state in which they are, and of the community, are consciously designed to be quite different. The remoter rural schools which, on account of the poverty of their patronage perhaps, have to get on with one badly trained teacher and have to carry on four grades of instruction in one school-room, and other schools which employ only university graduates, which bring their scholars together in sumptuous buildings, afford them laboratories and libraries, and have all the wealth of a great city to back them—these schools cannot seriously enter into competition with each other. Two years of study in one place will mean more than four in another; and there is no special danger in this, since this very inequality has brought it about that the completion of one grade in a school by no means carries with it the right to enter the next higher grade of any other school. It is not the case that a scholar who has passed through any grammar school whatsoever will be welcome in every high school. This is regulated by an entrance examination for the higher school, which will not accept merely the certificate of graduation from a lower.

There are still other forms of this differentiation. In the first place, the schools have shown a growing tendency to establish various parallel courses, between which the scholars are allowed to choose. In the simplest case there is, perhaps, on the one hand a very practical plan of education, and a second course which is rather more liberal; or, again, there may be a course for those who are not meaning to study further, and another course for those who are preparing for the entrance examinations to some higher school. The fiction of uniformity is preserved in this way. The child does not, as in Germany, choose between different schools; but he chooses between plans of education in the same school, and every day the tendency deepens to make this elective system more and more labile.

But the most modern pedagogues are not content even with this, and insist, especially in the grade of the high school, that the make-up of the course of study must be more and more, as they say, adapted to the individuality of the scholars; or, as others think, to the whimsies of the parents and the scholars. Since, in accordance with this, the entrance examinations for the colleges leave considerable free play for the choice of specialties, this movement will probably go on developing for some time. It appeals very cleverly to the instincts of both the Puritans and the utilitarians. The Puritan demands the development of all individual gifts, and the utilitarian wants the preparation for an individual career. Nevertheless, there are some indications of an opposite tendency. Even the utilitarian begins to understand that he is best fitted for the fight who bases his profession on the broadest foundation—who begins, therefore, with his specialization as late as possible. And the Puritan, too, cannot wholly forget that nothing is more important for his personal development than the training of the will in the performance of duty, in the overcoming of personal inhibitions, and that therefore for the scholar those studies may well be the most valuable which at the first he seems least inclined to pursue. Further differentiation results from the almost universal opportunity to pass through the schools in a somewhat shorter time. It is also possible for a student to progress more rapidly in one branch of study, and so in different branches to advance at different rates.

We have over and above all these things, and more particularly in the large cities, a factor of differentiation which has so far been quite left out of account. This is the private school. The goal for the student who wants to advance is not the diploma of graduation, but preparation for the entrance examinations which are next higher. This preparation can perhaps be obtained more thoroughly, more quickly, and under more fortunate social conditions, in a private school, which charges a high tuition, but in this way is able to engage the very best teachers, and able perhaps to have smaller classes than the public schools. And such a private school will be able to extend its influence over all education. Large and admirably conducted institutions have grown up, often in some rural vicinity, where several hundred young persons lead a harmonious life together and are educated from their earliest youth, coming home only during vacation. In such ways the private school has taken on the most various forms, corresponding to obvious needs. They find justly the encouragement of the state.

This diversity which we have sketched of public and private educational institutions brings us at once to another principle, which has been and always will be of great significance in American material and intellectual history—the principle that everywhere sharp demarcations between the institutions of different grades are avoided, and that instead, sliding gradations and easy transitions are brought about, by means of which any institution can advance without any hindrance. This is in every case the secret of American success—free play for the creations of private initiative. The slightest aspiration must be allowed to work itself out, and the most modest effort must be helped along. Where anything which is capable of life has sprung up, it should be allowed to grow. Sharp demarcation with official uniformity would make that impossible; for only where such unnoticeably small steps form the transitions, is any continuous inner growth to be expected. We have emphasized the local differences. The grammar school in New York is probably more efficient than the high school in Oklahoma, and the high school in Boston will carry its students probably as far as some little college in Utah.

The thousands of institutions which exist afford a continuous transition between such extremes, and every single institution can set its own goal as high as it wishes to. A school does not, by any act of law, pass into a higher class; but it perfects itself by the fact that the community introduces improvements, makes new changes, appoints better and better teachers, augments the curriculum, and adds to its physical equipment. In such ways, the school year by year imperceptibly raises its standard. And the same is true of the private school. Everything is a matter of growth, and in spite of the outward uniformity of the system every school has its individual standard. If one were to require that only such institutions should exist as had distinctly limited and similar aims, then the American would look on this as he would on an attempt to force all cities to be either of ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or a million inhabitants. Of course, all this would have to be changed, if as in Germany, certain school grades carried with them certain privileges. In America no school diploma carries officially any privilege at all. It is the entrance examination, and not the tests for graduation, which is decisive; and if there is any question of filling a position, the particular schools which the candidates have gone through are the things which are chiefly taken into account.

We must mention one more trait which differentiates the American from the German school system. The American public school is co-educational. Co-education means theoretically that boys and girls are entitled to common education, but practically it means that boys are also tolerated. The idea that the school should not recognize differences of sex is most firmly rooted in the Middle-Western States, where the population is somewhat coldly matter of fact; but it has spread through the entire country. It is said that family life lends the authority for such an intermingling of boys and girls; that, through a constant and mutual influence, the boys are refined and the girls are made hardy; and that, during the years of development, sexual tension is diminished. It is one of the chief attractions that the private school offers to smaller circles that it gives up this hardening of the girls and refining of the boys, and is always either a boys’ or a girls’ school.

Even more striking than the presence of girls in the boys’ schools is, perhaps, the great number of women who figure as teachers. The employment of women teachers began in the Northern States after the Civil War, because as a direct result of the decimation of the population there were not men teachers enough. Since that time this practice has increased throughout the country; and although high schools generally try to get men teachers, the more elementary schools are really wholly in the hands of women. Men do not compete for the lower schools, since the competition of the women has brought down the wages, and more remunerative, not to say more attractive, situations are to be found in plenty. Women, on the other hand, flock in in great numbers, since their whole education has made them look forward to some professional activity, and no other calling seems so peculiarly adapted to the feminine nature. The merits and drawbacks of co-education and of the predominance of women teachers cannot be separated from the general question of woman’s rights; and so the due treatment of these conditions must be put off until we come to consider the American woman from all sides.

It is not difficult to criticise rather sharply the school system, and any one living in the midst of American life will feel it a duty to deliver his criticism without parsimony. A system which expects the best it is to have, from the initiative of the periphery, must also expect the ceaseless critical co-operation of the whole nation.

In this way, then, crying and undeniable evils are often pointed out. We hear of political interference in the government of the schools, and of the deficient technical knowledge of local authorities, of the insufficient preparation of the women teachers, the poorness of the methods of instruction, of waste of time, of arbitrary pedagogical experiments, and of much else. In every reproach there is a kernel of truth. The connection of the schools with politics is in a certain sense unavoidable, since all city government is a party government. And the attempts to separate elections for the school committee entirely from politics will probably, for a long time yet, meet with only slight success. Since, however, every party is able to put its hand on discrete and competent men, the only great danger is lest the majority of those concerned misuse their influence for party ends, and perhaps deal out school positions and advancements as a reward for political services.

Such things certainly happen; but they never escape the notice of the opposite party, and are faithfully exploited in the next year’s election. In this way any great abuses are quickly checked. The secret doings, which have nothing to do with politics, are a great deal more dangerous. It is certain that the enormous school budgets of the large cities offer the possibility for a deplorable plundering of the public treasury, when it is a question of buying new land for school-houses, of closing building contracts, or of introducing certain text-books. A committee-man who in these ways is willing to abuse his influence is able to derive a considerable profit; and so it may well happen that men come to be on the school boards through political influence or through a professed interest in school matters, who have really no other aim than to get something out of it. It is very hard in such matters to arrive at a really fair judgment, since the rival claimants who are unsuccessful are very apt to frame the opinion that they have been so because the successful man had “connections.”

This sharply suspicious tendency and spirit of over-watchfulness on the part of the public are certainly very useful in preserving the complete integrity of the schools, but they occasion such a considerable tumult of rumour that it easily misleads one’s judgment as to the real condition of the institutions. In general, the school committees appointed in the local elections perform their work in all conscientiousness. It is, of course, the fact that they are rather frequently ignorant of things which they need to know; but the tendency to leave all technical questions in the hands of pedagogical specialists, and to undertake any innovations only at the advice of the school superintendent and directors, is so general that on the whole things do not go quite so badly as one might expect.

The preparation of the teachers leaves very much to be wished. Those teachers who have been educated in higher seminaries are by no means numerous enough to fill all the public school positions; and even less does the number of college graduates suffice for the needs of the high schools. The fact that the teaching profession is remarkably versed in pedagogics only apparently relieves this defect; for even the very best methods of teaching are of course no substitute for a firm grasp of the subject which is being taught. In the elementary schools the lack of theoretical training in a teacher is, of course, less felt. The instinct of the teacher, her interest in the child, her tact and sympathy, in short the personal element, are what is here most important. And since all this, even in the superficially educated woman, springs purely from her feminity, and since the energetic women are extraordinarily eager and self-sacrificing, so it happens that almost everywhere the elementary schools are better conducted by their women teachers than are the high schools.

So far as method goes, a great deal too much stress is laid on the text-book; too much is taught mechanically out of the book, and too little is directly imparted by the teacher. The teacher submits passively to the text-book; and the American himself is inclined to defend this, since his democratic belief in the power of black and white is unlimited. Before all, he regards it as the chief aim of the public school to prepare the citizen for the independent reading of newspapers and books. Therefore, the scholars are expected to become as much acquainted as possible with the use of books. There is no doubt that the American school children read more newspapers in later life than do the European, and it must also be borne in mind that for the most part the text-books are notably good. Perhaps, in regard to attractiveness, they even go rather too far. In this way not only the books of natural history, but also of history and literature, are crowded with illustrations. The geographies are generally lavishly gotten-up volumes with all sorts of entertaining pictures. The appeals to the eye, both by means of the text-books and even more by the aid of demonstrations and experiments, are carried really to excess. Even the blackboards, which run along all four walls of the school rooms, encourage the teacher to appeal rather more to the eye than to the ear.

Also the much-discussed experimentation with new pedagogical ideas is an unfortunate fact which cannot be denied. A central authority, which was held fully responsible for a large district, would of course be conservative; but where the details of teaching are left entirely to every local school inspector, then of course many shallow reforms and many unnecessary experiments with doubtful methods will be undertaken. The school inspector will feel himself moved to display his modern spirit and to show his pedagogical efficiency in just these ways. And many a private school, in order to make itself attractive to the public, is obliged to introduce the latest pedagogical foibles and to make all sorts of concessions, perhaps against its will. To-day the method of writing will be oblique, to-morrow vertical, and the day after to-morrow “reformed vertical.” The pupils to-day are taught to spell, to-morrow to pronounce syllables, the next day to take the whole word as the least unit in language; and a day later they may be taught the meaning of the words by means of appropriate movements.

It is not quite easy for a professional psychologist, who lectures every year to hundreds of students in that subject, to say openly that this irregular and often dilettante craze for reform is encouraged by nothing more than by the interest in psychology which rages throughout the country. The public has been dissatisfied with teachers, and conceived the idea that everything would be better if the pedagogues concerned themselves more with the psychical life of their pupils. And since for this purpose every mother and every teacher has the materials at hand, there has sprung up a pseudo-psychological study of unexampled dimensions. It is only a small step from such a study to very radical reforms. Yet everything here comes back in the end to the independent interests and initiative of the teacher; and although many of these reforms are amateurish and immature, they are nevertheless better than the opposite extreme would be—that is, than a body of indifferent and thoughtless teachers without any initiative at all.

It is also not to be denied that the American school wastes a good deal of time, and accomplishes the same intellectual result with a much greater outlay of time than the German school. There are plenty of reasons for this. Firstly, it is conspicuous throughout the country that Saturday is a day of vacation. This is incidental to the Puritan Sunday. The school day begins at nine o’clock in the morning, and the long summer vacations are everywhere regarded as times for idleness, and are almost never broken in on by any sort of work. Again, the home duties required of the school children are fewer than are required of the German child, and all the instruction is less exacting. The American girls would hardly be able to stand so great a burden if the schools demanded the same as the German boys’ schools. Herewith, however, one must not forget that this time which is taken from work is dedicated very specially to the development of the body, to sport and other active exercises, and in this way the perfection of the whole man is by no means neglected. Moreover, America has been able, at least so far, to afford the luxury of this loss of time; the national wealth permits its young men to take up the earning of their daily bread later than European conditions would allow.