drawers of water, who constitute the vast majority of the human race, and whose happiness is greater and whose welfare is more thoroughly conserved when governed than when governing."

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Who Shall Receive a Thorough Education According to Professor Peck? But how are we to determine who shall be members of this aristocracy? Shall we assume that the "children of the hewers of wood and the drawers of water" are fit for nothing but to follow in the footsteps of their parents, and that their welfare will therefore be most thoroughly conserved by blindly submitting to the guardianship of their betters? Plato saw that to select the class who were to rule, and therefore to receive a thorough education, simply on the basis of birth would be a manifest injury to society. Believing that heredity would generally insure to the children of his philosophers the possession of powers that entitled them to rule, he admitted that this would not always be so. He accordingly made it the duty of his philosophers, whom he endowed with infallible insight and absolute freedom from class spirit, to raise to the ruling class any children of the lower orders that possessed exceptional abilities, and to give them the education of the aristocracy.

But the defenders of aristocracy in our time, while admitting the injury done to society in particular cases by giving special privileges to birth, may contend that there is no way of avoiding it without inflicting greater injury in other directions. There can be, they may insist, no ideal system either of government or of education. If we could find in any society philosophers such as Plato dreamed of— men 1 Cosmopolitan, 1897, pp. 269-271.

endowed with infallible insight and entirely free from class spirit and if the other members of society had the power of infallibly determining who the philosophers were and the wisdom to trust themselves to their guidance, then indeed we might have a Utopia in which each man should receive the education best adapted to prepare him for his proper work and do it. But none of these conditions has ever existed anywhere save in Plato's imagination. And in their absence no safer method, none that inflicts less injury on society, it may be argued, can be found than the one employed by an aristocracy. That method assumes that the descendants of able men will have the special abilities which entitled their ancestors to special privileges, and that they, therefore, should receive the education befitting the members of the ruling class.

The Relation of Education to Political Philosophy. — Let it be repeated that the contrasting postulates that underlie aristocratic and republican forms of government respectively have not been presented for the purpose of discussing them. That would be a work of supererogation in this country, at least at this time. For though a considerable number of Americans doubtless hold the views of Professor Peck, at present we are safe in regarding them as constituting too small a minority to be likely to influence action. But the object has been to show that there can be no intelligent discussion of education, especially in its elementary forms, unless it is based on a certain political philosophy. If the German political philosophy is true, then the German educational practice which discourages spontaneity in its elementary schools is wise. But if our American political philosophy is true, if that form of society is best in

which there is no discrimination between man and man, if men as such have an inherent right, if not to equality of opportunity, at least to freedom from artificial inequalities, then the thing to do is to work out an American theory of education based on the assumption that every member of society, without regard to birth, race, or sex, should receive that development of his or her powers which makes life most worth the living.

The Philosophy of Education Should Assume the Truth of the Republican Theory. But without attempting to discuss the abstract principles underlying the political philosophies of republican and aristocratic forms of government, it may not be amiss to point out that there are considerations of the most cogent character which justify us in assuming, at least from the standpoint of education, the truth of the republican theory. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the cultured and intelligent few alone have the "right" to rule, that the interests of all parties would be best subserved by restricting all power to them. There is no way of preventing the real or supposed interests of one group of rulers from clashing with those of another. It is this conflict of interests between the dominant elements of one "nation" - which always practically means the rulers of a country -that has given rise to nine tenths of the wars of history. Now in war the immediate object not ulterior and remote consequences - is bound to monopolize attention, and the immediate object is always victory. But the achievement of this object depends not merely on the quantity but on the quality of the force that is hurled against the adversary; not merely on the number of soldiers but on their character, training, and intelligence,

In this way the elevation of the intelligence of the governed may become a matter of importance to rulers. Regarding the masses as mere means to the attainment of their own ends, looking upon themselves as the only creatures having an intrinsic right to consideration in the world, the few are likely, in the course of time, to be confronted with conditions which make it essential in the furtherance of their objects to improve the quality of their tools.

The Effect of Education on the Masses. But the human tool protests against being treated as a tool as soon as you begin to educate him. Perhaps he ought not to protest; perhaps the well-being of society requires that he should look upon himself as having but one purpose in creation, the hewing of wood and the drawing of water for his masters. Perhaps the widening of his own horizon, the illumination of his own mind, the enlargement of his own sympathies, the purifying of his own affections, the deepening and quickening of his own sense of duty and of beauty, the improvement of the conditions of his own life, are really matters of no consequence in the scheme of life. Be it so; the significant thing is, the moment you begin to educate him, the moment you begin to increase his value for your purposes, that moment you implant in his mind the germ of the belief that from his point of view they are supremely important matters, and the more you educate him the more quickly you will cause that germ to develop.

The Dilemma of Rulers. -This, then, is the dilemma of rulers they must choose between the poor service of con

tented but brutish workers and the far more effective but discontented service of intelligent men. The nearer the masses approach to the level of brutes, the more their aspirations are stifled, the more destitute they are of ambition, the more contented and at the same time the less useful they are. Professor Peck is right: universal education means universal discontent. But he did not add that universal ignorance means universal incapacity. Contented ineffectiveness, discontented effectiveness - between these rulers must choose.

For reasons already mentioned, the choice is likely in the course of time to be discontented efficiency. Disregarding remote consequences, rulers are likely, sooner or later, to be confronted with conditions which make the accomplishment of their own purposes dependent on the elevation and education of their subjects. And this is one of the causes that tends to bring about democracy. (By this term I mean a society founded on the principle that "the greatest good of all is subserved by the highest individual development of each.") For when the discontent that education engenders takes possession of the masses, they begin to employ their own energies for a new purpose -the promotion of their own welfare. The tradition of uncounted centuries, that they are mere cogs in the social machine whose one function it is to grind out the interests of the nobility, no longer binds, and they begin to wonder whether the sun does not shine and the flowers bloom and the brooks murmur for them. The history of every progressive people in the world is an illustration of this; and the stationary peoples, whatever else they may be, are those whose rulers have not yet found it to their interest to educate the masses.