Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers

Little Journeys To The Homes Of
Great
by Elbert Hubbard

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Title: Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers
Author: Elbert Hubbard
Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18936]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Little Journeys To the Homes of Great Teachers
Elbert Hubbard
Memorial Edition

Printed and made into a Book by The Roycrofters, who are in East
Huron, Erie County, New York
Wm. H. Wise & Co. New York
Copyright, 1916, By The Roycrofters

CONTENTS
MOSES 9
CONFUCIUS 41
PYTHAGORAS 69
PLATO 97
KING ALFRED 123
ERASMUS 149
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 183
THOMAS ARNOLD 217
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL 245
HYPATIA 269
SAINT BENEDICT 293

MARY BAKER EDDY 327

[Illustration: MOSES]
MOSES
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And
God said, moreover, unto Moses: Thus shalt thou say unto the children
of Israel, The Lord God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name
forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
--Exodus iii: 14, 15
MOSES
Moses was the world's first great teacher. He is still one of the world's
great teachers. Seven million people yet look to his laws for special
daily guidance, and more than two hundred millions read his books and
regard them as Holy Writ. And these people as a class are of the best
and most enlightened who live now or who have ever lived.
Moses did not teach of a life after this--he gives no hint of
immortality--all of his rewards and punishments refer to the present. If
there is a heaven for the good and a hell for the bad, he did not know of
them.
The laws of Moses were designed for the Now and the Here. Many of
them ring true and correct even today, after all this interval of more
than three thousand years. Moses had a good knowledge of physiology,
hygiene, sanitation. He knew the advantages of cleanliness, order,
harmony, industry and good habits. He also knew psychology, or the
science of the mind: he knew the things that influence humanity, the
limits of the average intellect, the plans and methods of government
that will work and those which will not.

He was practical. He did what was expedient. He considered the
material with which he had to deal, and he did what he could and
taught that which his people would and could believe. The Book of
Genesis was plainly written for the child-mind.
The problem that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a
question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put
forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and
his precepts were such as they could assimilate.
It were easy to take the writings of Moses as they have come down to
us, translated, re-translated, colored and tinted with the innocence,
ignorance and superstition of the nations who have kept them alive for
thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the
original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and
guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound
reverence and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people
who, in the face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have
persisted that things once written were eternally sufficient.
In point of time there is no teacher within many hundred years
following him who can be compared with him in originality and
insight.
Moses lived fourteen hundred years before Christ.
The next man after him to devise a complete code of conduct was
Solon, who lived seven hundred years after. A little later came
Zoroaster, then Confucius, Buddha, Lao-tsze, Pericles, Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle--contemporaries, or closely following each other, their
philosophy woven and interwoven by all and each and each by all.
Moses, however, stands out alone. That he did not know natural history
as did Aristotle, who lived a thousand years later, is not to his discredit,
and to emphasize the fact were irrelevant.
Back of it all lies the undisputed fact that Moses led a barbaric