The New Ideal in Education | Page 3

been done. The architecture of St. Paul's is one of the ancient styles, and no style in architecture was ever invented or created by one person, but by generations and generations.
_He:_ And what about Victor Hugo and Milton? Are they not great poets?
_I:_ Yes, they are if compared with certain minor poets, but they are not great if compared with the popular poetry of India or Greece. Mahabarata, the Koran, and Zend-Avesta, and the Bible, are products of collective efforts--therefore they are superior to every personal effort.
_He:_ Do you not appreciate the great economists and what they did for the household, and common-wealth in general?
_I:_ Certainly I do; but their work is too much overestimated. Not a handful of economic writers, like Adam Smith and Marx, but the common genius of generations and generations arranged the house, set the furniture, created the cooking, constructed towns, invented plays and enjoyments, customs, language, and so forth.
_He:_ You agree, I think, that Shaljapin and Caruso have wonderful voices, don't you?
_I:_ Yes, I agree. But don't you agree that a choir of millions of human voices would be something much more striking and wonderful than any solo singer since the beginning of time?
_He:_ Don't you believe in the wisdom of wise men like Kant and Spencer?
_I:_ No, I don't. I think there is incomparably more healthy and more applicable wisdom in the popular sayings, proverbs, parables, and tales of the nations, cultivated and uncultivated, in Macedonia, Armenia, Ceylon, New Zealand, Japan, &c., than in some dozen of the greatest thinkers of Europe.
_He:_ Who is then in your opinion a great man?
_I:_ Only a good man is a great man to me, who is conscious that he is a cell in the panhuman organism, or a brick in the building of human history. Such a man is more a man of truth and of the future than any conqueror, who thinks that a hundred millions of people and hundreds of years have waited just for him and his guidance, his work, or his wisdom.
That is what I would say to a pupil of individualism in education. And at the end I would remind him of Christ and His call after the children, and of the new ideal of education, of panhumanism which stands over individualism, and of the collective work of people which stands over every individual work and merit.
EDUCATION AS AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIR.
It is quite surprising and humiliating that other things can be discussed and settled as international affairs, before education. Yet you have hundreds of things regulated by international laws, and among these hundred things education is net yet reckoned. You have the International Institution of the Red Cross, international laws on trade, fishery, travel, copyright, political crimes, barbarities in war-time, &c. But this war shows quite clearly that education--before anything else--should be a matter of international consideration and regulation. Behold, how illusory are all international restrictions when the education of a nation is quite excluded from any control! When the Nitzschean education of Germany teaches the German youth to despise all neighbours, all nations and races as inferior ones, how could you expect the Germans to respect the laws and regulations about Belgium, and submarines--and Zeppelin-warfare, and use of the dum-dum bullets and of poisonous gases?
If there is anything to be learned from this war it is doubtless this: The education of youth in all the countries of the world must become an international affair of the very first importance.
THE RUSSIAN TSAR, MR. CARNEGIE AND NOBEL.
The Russian Tsar suggested the Peace Conference of The Hague. Mr. Carnegie built a wonderful Hall of Peace there, formed several commissions for the investigation of war cruelties during the Balkan Wars, and founded many public libraries for the instruction of the poor. The noble Nobel left his big fortune for the support of the best works of literature or science having as their aim the general good of mankind. If I were either the Russian Tsar or Mr. Carnegie or Professor Nobel I would do neither of the three mentioned things, but I would give suggestions and material support to an International Board of Education.
That is the point to start with in the consolidation of the World. I am sorry to say that no one of these three great friends of mankind listens to the prophetic words of Christ: Let children come unto me! and that no one thought that no great social reform and no real philanthropic foundation of mankind is possible to realise--yea, even to start--otherwise than through the children. The Peace Conference, being rather a law court than anything else, is beaten by the uncontrolled warlike education of the German nation. Carnegie's books have been read by grown-up people who had already got a direction in life, and Carnegie's Hall of Peace in