II. The Reëducation of National Desires
The second factor in internationalism is also, on its educational side, related to a knowledge of history. This is the attitude which peoples must take toward their own purposes and ambitions. We must begin to speak of the education of national consciousness. This process of the education of nations must be such as will teach peoples to surrender certain visions most of them have in regard to a future which cannot now be realized. The content of the desires of nations must now be changed. The future of many peoples will depend upon the extent to which they can remain progressive and enthusiastic without the stimulus of imperialistic ambitions.
Considering our own situation in America, it seems plain that we have confronting us a serious educational problem, that of imparting to the rising generation and of acquiring for ourselves, a better understanding of the meaning and place of our country in the world, and a more earnest interest in its functions and its welfare. This requires something more than a teaching of American history. It is time for us to take stock of all our material and all our spiritual possessions. We need perhaps to discover what our ideals really are and what the ideas and the forces arethat have made our history what it has been; and what in the future we are likely to do and to be, and ought to do and be. We must question deeply at this time our own soul; we must look to our institutions, our literature and our art for an understanding of ourselves.
This more profound knowledge of ourselves must be made the basis of our especial educational philosophy. Here is the most urgent of all our educational problems. Education is, or should be, a process by which national character is constantly being molded. In the school the nation must learn much that cannot be read in books. It must learn to believe things that cannot be proved, or perhaps even definitely formulated as truth. The soul of the nation must be subjected, in a word, to some kind ofspiritual leadership. Constructive statesmanship must be felt as an influence in the school. The problem is really nothing less than that of educating and forming national character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our character cannot safely be left so much to chance and to the effects of our favorable environment and our original stock of virtues. We cannot continue to be so naïve and so unconscious of our country as we have been. What we are and what we must do as a people, we say, ought to be better understood. We should bring these ideals of ours out of the mists of partisan thinking and give them more definite shape, and at the same time translate them into the language of sincere living. National honor ought to be made a clearer idea. We ought at least to be sure it contains the idea of honesty. Such prejudices as our history has encouraged in us must be recognized, and computed in our personal equation. These prejudices we certainly harbor—in regard to our own particular type of government, our culture and education, our freedom and our democracy and our security. Every nation appears to have its own idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its belief in its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocentfaith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness and perversion without introducing worse faults is a difficult problem of education. In either direction there appear to be real dangers. A nation steeped in provincial ways, plunged as we are now into the midst of world politics, has difficulties lying before it compared to which contributing a decisive military power is small. There are dangers in standing aloof from other peoples. But if we surrender too readily our prejudices and homespun ways, and too rapidly absorb influences from without, we shall be no safer, for carried too far, that would mean to lose our mission and our vision. There appears to be, moreover, no safe and easy middle course which we can follow. Our only course seems to be clearly to understand ourselves, rise above our limitations and difficulties, turn our faults into virtues, and make ourselves secure by our own inner worth and power.
Plainly there are difficult problems ahead of the teachers of American history. They must not inculcate suspicion and fear, but they must not present our security in a false light. They must not inspire the war-like spirit and imperialistic ambitions, but they must do nothing to lessen our seriousness of purpose and enthusiasm for the future. They must not teach national vanity, but they must not on the other hand encourage a spirit which is in any way over-critical and cynical or supercilious. There must be political wisdom on the part of the people but not a sophisticated state of mind. These teachers must inspire a wholesome pride, without creating an inflamed sense of honor such as has caused so many wars. They must make clear the virtue and the individuality of our own national life, but in doing this they must not disparage the foreign and give rise to prejudice and antagonism. How to establish us still more firmly in our own essential traits and philosophy of life without making us conceited and closed to good influences from without; how to give us a strongsense of solidarity without the attendant sense of opposition to everything outside the group is a part of our educational work which, in a broad sense, falls to the teacher of history.
The central problem of the education of national consciousness, in our view, is to make desires more conscious and to subject them to discipline and the influence of the best ideals of American life. MacCurdy says that by making instincts conscious we take a great step in advance. That we should say is true, if we make them conscious in the right way, and do not try to substitute rational principles for them. But we need to go further; we must not only understand and control the impulses of aggression, jealousy, fear and the like that have played such a sinister part in history, but we must know more about those complex and subtile things we call moods, which are really the main forces in modern life. These moods are accumulations and repositories of interests and desires, and they must be appreciated by all who as educators, undertake to direct the forces in our national life. These desires must be made more definitely conscious everywhere, and be subjected to influence and education. It is not simply institutions, organizations and factions that must be watched and controlled, just because these are the more obvious and most easily affected expressions of tendencies and desires, but all the subtile feelings or moods which are the raw materials, so to speak, of future conduct, ideals, and institutions.
Here comes to view, of course, our whole problem of assimilation of heterogeneous elements. Favored by our geographical position, and by the fortunate success and the great suggestive power of the ideal of liberty with which our history began, America has had, as we all realize, thus far an unusual career. We have been able to assimilate foreign elements with great rapidity. We may not be so fortunate in the future. Distances which have severed our newpeoples from their old ties have become strangely shortened by the war. Our problems of adjustment have become more subtile and complex. The necessity of succeeding in unifying our population is more urgent. Therefore our future development, as a nation, becomes to a greater extent a process of conscious direction; what we have done naïvely and by sheer force of our powers of growth, we must do now, it is likely, more deliberately and efficiently.
We have before us in America the highly important and by no means easy task of harmonizing, under new conditions, all sorts of forces and desires by directing them in ways and toward ends which cannot now be wholly determined. There is both a psychological and a pedagogical aspect of the situation. Psychology must perform for American life something very much like a psycho-analysis; we should expect to see as a result of the war a greatly increased interest, on the part of the American people, in themselves; self-understanding and self-interpretation, we should suppose, would be advanced; all the sciences of human nature we should think would be called upon to help us to make a new American history and to formulate the purposes of our national life.
On the pedagogical side we might expect reasonably to see a deepened sincerity on the part of all who in any way stand in the position of teachers. We are dependent upon leaders in a democratic country, and all leaders in whatever place in society would now, one might hope, feel a heightened sense of duty, both to understand and to influence American life, to represent in their own persons and teachings the highest ideals, and indeed to become truly creative forces in society. Boutroux says that Germany is a product of an external phenomenon—education. America, we should say, must become more and more a product of an internal phenomenon—education. That is, the forces that will continue to shape our country must be in the form of leadership growing out of the bestimpulses and the true meaning of our civilization. No forces will make of us something we are not by nature; our strength must continue to come from within, but it is the aristocratic spirit, the aristocracy of genius in the fields of intellect, morality and art that must of course have the fullest opportunity to influence all our institutions, even the school room.
So to organize our educational system that it shall be thrown wide open to all new and good influences; so to conduct the school that it shall be immediately responsive to these influences, is one of the most urgent needs of the internal life of the nation. This, rather than the introduction of any new content into the school is now our chief need. Some of these influences must be personal, belonging to the present. Some belong to the past. We must make American history, poetry, oratory, science, art and philosophy serve more completely than they do now the ideals and the right ambitions of the nation. This is the way we must both bring the past to fuller realization and also create new life which shall make amends for the deficiencies of the past.
III. Practical Interests
The foundation of internationalism, in our view, is the recognition of the legitimate desires and needs of peoples.The desires of peoples when educated should become interests in the performance of all normal functions of national life. The functions are practical; they take the form of many commonplace and daily activities. The recognition of the legitimacy of the desires of nations implies, or at least naturally leads to, coöperation in their accomplishment. It is very probable, therefore, and it appears to be required in any internationalism that is more than a name, that there shall be in the future wide coöperation in the performance of various activities byinternational organizations and agreements. If this is to be the order of the future, new educational efforts will be demanded, and there must be different methods and different points of view in several phases of our educational system, for now all education is devised with reference to an autonomous state of the nation.
If practical coöperation becomes a part of our plan of international organization in the future, we shall see many problems in applied economics and industry taken up for far more serious consideration than has been possible hitherto. Some of these problems, attacked even on a national scale, have seemed hopeless, but when viewed in their international aspects and with a prospect of international interest and effort they seem very different. There are many such problems toward the solution of which education must contribute a large part. We might mention the food problem of the world as typical, and point to the present world-wide interest and coöperation as an indication of what may come in the future in regard to all the problems of production and distribution of necessities,ifwe really mean anything by our internationalism. Apparently we hold within our hands the means of alleviating most, if not all, the destitution of the world. Organization and education in efficiency are the necessary and the sufficient weapons.
So we may conclude that an efficient method of educating peoples in the work of food production, and in the habit of conserving necessities would make a wide change in the economic condition of the world. Organization which shall include in some way the service of all children, will add still more to efficiency, and will contribute an educational factor of great importance. In such ways we may to an unlimited extent increase the available energies of the world, and make possible, if we will, the further increase and expansion of the human race. Such a possibility and such an ideal give a totally new meaningto much of the fundamental work of education. All our departments and accessories of the educational system that have anything to do with the elemental occupations acquire a new interest and importance from this point of view.
The whole field of industry offers now, indeed, a broader educational opportunity. Children's hands are ready to do many things that will increase the happiness and the powers of the children themselves and at the same time add to the world's prosperity. Children must, of course, not be exploited in tasks that belong to the adult, but there is a proper place for practical organization of children in the world's work, and a potential helpfulness in children in the larger affairs of society that has not yet been drawn upon, although surely we have seen, during the years of the war, what children might accomplish. It is above all in its relations to universal social feeling that such practical education and use of childhood are most significant. Out of the practical activities, moral results could hardly fail to come. It is not too much to expect that the children of the world may sometime be so organized that the power of childish enthusiasm, raised to we know not what degree by the suggestive force of such world-wide relations as are now possible, may quickly be turned to the accomplishment of great tasks,—doing its part in the service, the conservation, the self denial, that any serious interest in internationalism will in the future with but little doubt make necessary.
Education that shall take into account the principles of efficiency and economy as applied to universal problems will be a great advance upon any teaching hitherto done in the interest of internationalism. It is through practical activity and interest, suggesting and requiring restraint and coöperation, arousing imagination and the dramatic impulses, that fruitful and permanent social affiliations of nations with one another will be likely to be made. We may safely assume, in fact, that firm affiliations can be madeonlyin some such way. Internationalism, from this point of view, is at bottom not a political problem, but an educational problem. The world will be united only through the mediation of its daily practical needs. The motives for such union are themselves commonplace. Moral intentions are represented also, and world crises make the conditions ripe for such coördination of interests, but they do not alone produce the definite organization without which the world will continue to be, as Dickinson calls Europe, a society in the state of anarchy.
IV. The Higher Industry
It is in the higher forms of practical coöperative activity and in the intellectual processes, the interests and social feelings accompanying them that we should expect to see elaborated and made more ideal the internationalism that has first been put to work in the service of the world at a lower level. There is work to do that appeals to profound motives and feelings. The great engineering projects that await us, the work of exploring, colonizing and the like in which universal interest and coöperation are necessary fascinate the mind. These things satisfy the dramatic instinct, and they may prove to be in the future an actual substitute for war, as James hoped. The educational opportunities of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that expects to play a great part in the world's politics must expect to do much in the world's service. These nations must be prepared in every possible way to contribute greatly to the material improvement of the earth. To this end technical education, all along the line, must be kept at a high point of efficiency. Inventive thought in all mechanical fields will certainly be a large factor in the culture values of peoples in the future. When we see what four years of war have accomplished in the way of giving us control over material forces, we may realize what, with the continuation of a powerful incentive, might be done in the arts of peace. These great practical needs have also, as we say, their power of appeal to all the profound motives ofthe social life. We must make use of this appeal. All the power of the strong story of the day's work must be turned upon this educational problem. All industry, indeed, must be made more dramatic, as it can be under the inspiration of the larger industrial life which the idea of internationalism opens up before us. Industry must be made more satisfying to the fundamental motives of the individual, while at the same time it is made more efficient, and more social. The new generation must be filled with the romance of the world's work. Only by presenting to young and plastic minds the ideal features of work shall we be able to harmonize the individual and the social will. Only so, perhaps, in an industrial age shall we be able to escape from being destroyed by industrialism. Anything that will introduce art and imagination into work, anything that will even brighten a little the dull moods of toil will help both to prepare the way for the wider world relations we talk about, and to prevent the most destructive elements and moods of industrialism gaining the upper hand.
V. The Democratic Spirit
We must eventually think of internationalism on its educational side as most fundamentally a question of developing in the world theinternational spirit. We might quite naturally think of this as the education of social feeling or of the social instinct. This is, however, not the most productive attitude toward the situation, in our view, simply because when we think of the education of the feelings we are likely to be satisfied with the principles of an old static philosophy of life and of the school. Moral and social feelings, we believe, grow best in a practical medium. We cannot expand social feeling at will, or produce a democratic spirit by some simple process of education. When we try to extend social feeling too far we make the moral life insincere. To try to expand social feeling andmoral interest so as to make it include the foreign, to try to love our enemies in advance of all æsthetic and practical relations with the foreign seems futile. Distance must first be eliminated by imagination. Social and moral codes must be founded upon intimate relations. External and distant relations among peoples make for diplomatic forms and a hypocritical morality. These are substitutes for social feeling. These purely social relations of nations (like those of individuals) always hide enmity and jealousy. We cannot expect, therefore, to create a moral spirit in the relations of peoples to one another by teaching alone. We cannot hope to change individualism to altruism merely by exciting feeling. Our main effort must be directed toward establishing ethical relations, rather than to stimulating moral sentiments.
It seems useless to preach universal brotherhood either to the child who lacks entirely the content of experience to make such sentiments real, or to the working masses who now lack enthusiasm inallthe social relations. At least to depend upon such teaching to create international spirit is futile. Love for mankind is too ideal and too remote, as yet, to arouse deep and sincere impulses and feelings. All teaching, therefore, whether in the school or elsewhere that is directed exclusively or especially to the moral aspects of peace, altruistic behavior and internationalism, seems to-day, to say the least, peculiarly inadequate. Our spirit in education must be broadly humanistic, and must indeed lay deep foundations for all moral and social relations, but in so far as it ends in being cultural and hortatory it can have no deep and lasting effect.
The teaching of international morality and universal interests, and the development of aworld-consciousnessdepend fundamentally, we may suppose, upon experiences which are perhaps not specifically moral in form at all. It is rather even by the aesthetic experience than the moralthat the social consciousness will best be expanded and made to encircle the world. If we can make the world seem vividly real to the child we shall have the intellectual content for the making of moral feelings. The unmoral nature of international relations and of the feelings of peoples for one another are due in great part precisely to the lack of power of imagination and of that concrete knowledge and experience which would make the foreign seem real. That which is remote from us and different in appearance seems shadowy and ghost-like. Theinternal meaningof that which is thus far away in space cannot be perceived. Everything that is foreign tends to belong in our categories merely to the world of objects. Moral feeling towards objects is manifestly impossible. International law fails to have moral force because nations are in general aware of one another only in these external ways. The world of foreign objects must be changed to a world of persons having history and internal meaning. When we can interpret and understand international law in terms of relations within human experience and as affecting individuals, it will begin perhaps to seem real and hence morally obligatory.
There is another aspect of the work of creating and directing the wider social consciousness and giving it ethical purpose and form, which is still more fundamental, and at the same time, to casual thought, perhaps still more remote from definite moral improvement in the world and from all the immediately practical problems of internationalism. It is the mood of our social life which we call the democratic spirit, and which, made universal, is the substratum of internationalism that most of all needs to be controlled and educated. At the same time this democratic spirit is least of all susceptible to definite and routine discipline, of all the factors of internationalism. This democratic spirit contains possibilities of the greatest good and of the greatest evil. Out of it may growinternational order, or international anarchy and internal disruption. How to keep this democratic spirit progressive and constructive in its temper, broad in sympathy and full of enthusiasm, how to free it from infection by all the poisons that are prone to attack the popular consciousness is one of our great problems of education.
This democratic spirit is the real power behind internationalism. It is as the mood of the city, the whole spirit of the modern urban life, that it is most significant. The mood of the city contains on one side the possibility of an internationalism which is nothing more than a surrender of all patriotism, and is at heart only a mass interest in rights and needs. On the other hand all the interests and impulses that make internationalism necessary and possible seem to have their origin in the city. The city represents, with all its evil, the higher life and the line of progress. Progress passes through the city. The city is the symbol of creativeness and achievement. Industrialism, the essential spirit of the city, is the condition, normal and necessary we must conclude, out of which the necessity of international order arises. It is a phase of the process by which nations become dependent upon one another by being specialized and becoming densely populated. It is also a factor in the cause of wars without and revolutions within.
The mood of the city is thus in a sense the essence of life, but it is also the source of disease and death in the national life. It is the price that is paid for civilization that the city tends to become the hardened artery of national life. The control of the city moods by educational forces we may believe is one of the most fundamental of all the problems of conscious evolution. It is the control at the fountain-head of the forces out of which internationalism is to be made that we undertake when we try to educate the life of the city, with reference to its good and its evil. The too rapid urbanizing of the life of nations, theproduction, in the cities, of powers too great and too rapidly growing to be controlled by the civilizing forces in a country is the great danger in modern life. So great indeed are the dangers in the accelerated growth of industrialism in all the great countries and the increased specialization in the industrial life, that something radical must be done, in our view, to counterbalance this movement, and especially to control and to raise to higher levels the psychic factors of city life.
Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save democracy from itself—from being destroyed by forces which accumulate in the cities. We must keep life from becoming sophisticated before its time. We must prevent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and from becoming attached to wholly material interests.There must be found, in some way, means of causing counter-currents to set in against the tide that flows so strongly from country to city.Germany's fate should teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how the forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in the direction either of fanatical nationalism or toward the lowest of all forms of internationalism, in which all form of government is thrown down. It must teach us also how to catch the note of new "dominants" that are concealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail.
The control of the formation of the city moods, and the direction and utilization of the great energies contained in them, now require, if ever anything were demanded of conscious creative effort,more power on the part of all our educational factors. The school appears now to be at the parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children for life, or become a far greater power in the world than it has as yet been. We must decide whether the school is to control, or to be controlled by, the political and industrial forces of the day. We must see whether the schoolis going to reflect the culture and the moods of the environment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence upon its surroundings.
It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in the school can now greatly alter its position, and release it from its bondage to politics and from the overwhelming influences of its environment, and prevent the leveling downward and the stereotyping process that is taking place in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral product and the training and selection of teachers. Nothing less than a movement which shall break up some of the deepest and most firmly rooted habits and conventions of the school and throw the school back, so to speak, upon more generic and primitive motives than those that now control it will be sufficient.The school needs more than anything else a change of scene—a change ofvenue, if a legal term be allowed. The school everywhere, but especially the school of the city, is surrounded by influences that prejudice it to fixed habits of thought and keep it true to a type which has long since ceased to be necessary. The school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in all the great industrial countries.
No single change in any institution, in our view, could strike closer to the roots of our whole educational problem of the future than the bodily transfer of the city school far out into the open country. Such a move seems wholly practicable, economic from every point of view, even the financial, and it would place the school in a position in which profound changes in its whole plan and organization could hardly fail to follow almost automatically. With our present facilities for transportation, the daily exodus of children from the surroundings in which are being produced the elements of our civilization that are hardest to control would be entirely possible. The effects upon the whole of education, and upon all the future life of countries like our own could hardly fail to be profound.Thefundamental moods of childhood would be changed, and everything contained in child life would be more amenable to control.Schools would become more variable and more experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the social and intellectual average of the profession. A much larger field would be opened up for all those methods of work in education that may be designated as æsthetic—that is, that contain qualities of freedom, activity and creativeness.
VI. Idea of World Organization
Some form of organization of nations having definite representation, constitution, and laws, and with a certain degree of centralization and embodiment in visible institutions and locations will exist, we may suppose, for all future time in the world. The existence, even in idea, of such organization presents to us inevitable educational problems. Instruction in a general way and universally in world politics, familiarizing all with the meaning of these laws and political bodies, is but a part, although a necessary part, of the work. Our democratic principle demands that more and more interest and participation in all forms of government be acquired by the people, that peoples and not merely governments shall be the units which are brought together, that there be more organizations of the people performing group functions. If the loyalty of nations to one another is to be secured, as seems necessary, by establishing practical relations among them, the education of the coming generations in these relations and organizations and in all practical affairs seems unavoidable. The people must have a proper appreciation of common interests as implying common work, and not be encouraged to believe that rights of representation are their chief concern. All must know the power of organization. All must see that the international structures of our own day, however complete inform, are but a beginning and basis of function, and that there must be put behind these forms all the energies of the people, young and old, made effective through organization for practical efforts.
It is through participation in activities that are international in scope that, in our opinion, the best education in the idea of internationalism will be obtained. This is the way to the good will without which political ideas will be likely to remain nationalistic in fact whatever political coördinations may exist among nations. It is as a practical idea that internationalism needs now to be impressed upon the minds of all. An international organization must be looked upon as something useful, which will remain only if it performs functions in which all are interested and in which all can in some way take part.It is a sense of living in the worldrather than of belonging exclusively to one locality that must be taught. It is the idea of a world of nations in organic unity rather than a world of nations attached to one another by political bonds that we need to convey.
It is active participation in the business of a world that must be regarded as the necessary basis for education in the idea of internationalism. World government must be conceived in terms of world functions. But we must also provide for the most dramatic possible representation of everything contained in the idea of internationalism and represented in its laws and forms. The most vivid possible presentation must be made of everything that is done internationally, if we wish to keep alive the spirit which now prevails in the world. We must lose no opportunity to make current history impressive; we must bring out all its dramatic features in order to fixate once for all the idea of the organic unity of the race, and its necessary coördination in tangible forms. International law must be made intelligible to very young minds, and now that we are to have an international seat of congresses and courts theutmost must be made of its existence to give reality to the idea of internationalism.
Those who plan for the future of the international idea will do well to take into account these pedagogical aspects of it.It is quite as important to make the international idea pedagogically persuasive as to make it politically sound.Such an idea must have a place and an embodiment if it is to seize hold upon the popular mind. An international city seems indispensable, and the further the thought of it can be removed from that of existing countries the more readily will it aid the young mind in making the abstractions necessary to conceive the true interests of all nations or all humanity as distinct from the interests of one nation. In this we are making beginnings to be realized perhaps in a far distant future. We want no unnatural and sentimental internationalism, but there is every reason now for wishing to plant the seed of a higher and more organic life than at the present time exists in the world.
The question of the possibility of an universal language arises again. The invention of a new language, if we may judge at all by the past, is not practicable. But the extension universally of some living language seems possible. This seems to be demanded in the interest of the international idea. It is desirable and quite possible to make all civilized peoples bilingual, for of course we should not expect anywhere to see a foreign language supplant the native tongue. It is not alone to facilitate intercourse and give a sense of solidarity that the possession of an universal language is to be desired. We think quite as much of the impetus thus given to the production of an universal literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas about the world, but moods which will not be found expressed in national literatures at all. This literature might be the beginning of a solidarity in the world which is not now definitely conceivable. Such an extension of language, however, we should hardly expect to take place except inthe course of development of practical relations which first stimulate the desire for such common language.
VII. The Philosophical Attitude
There is an element in the idea and mood of internationalism which we can call nothing else but philosophic. The ideality and universality of internationalism itself are expressions of the philosophic spirit. Internationalism, we might say, is a philosophic idea, although this might mean to some that we place it among the unrealizable and Utopian plans. But this is not the case. The philosophic spirit is, in our view, the most practical of moods, since it is the creative, liberal, and progressive attitude and the source of the most profoundly right judgments even in practical affairs. The philosophic spirit is a background, we may say, for all the more specific moods, thoughts and activities that enter into the idea of internationalism.
And yet, real and important as the philosophic spirit is, we cannot readily discuss it as a definite aspect of education. The reason is that it involves the educational foundations themselves. The spirit, the method and the content of the school are all involved in it. We can, however, find some concrete manifestations of this philosophic attitude. In the first place we might say that it is a religious mood in education. It is demanded of any school that hopes to play a large part in the affairs of the world that, in a broad sense, its whole spirit bereligious. The school must be deeply touched by the sense of a spiritual world. The history of the world must be felt to be real—that is, as an unfoldment of purpose in the world. The values and the meaning of everything are to be appreciated and understood, according to this view, through a process of enrichment of the mind under the influence of the highest social ideals expressed in the most persuasive forms. Education thus centers in the work of developing the power toappreciate values in all experience. Anything, too, that sustains optimistic moods helps to create the philosophical spirit, and one function of this philosophic spirit is to forestall the cynical moods and the narrow and prejudiced ways of thinking which are among the most dangerous tendencies of the times. The tendency to form judgments upon insufficient evidence and to act according to narrow and one-sided principles is incompatible with the philosophic attitude.
It is of course by no means the actual teaching of philosophy to every one, or the spreading broadcast of any particular philosophical principle that one would advocate as a preventive culture or to cure existing evils. It is rather a mode of living and of thinking throughout society and in all the educational process that is wanted. What we need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity to penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, greater responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to judge values, and a more plastic and more freely flowing mental life. These are of course large demands and imply faith and an interest in a remote future.But a school which is religions through and through in its attitude toward life and is deeply touched by the influence of art in all its ways of dealing with the child will go a long way toward fulfilling the requirements of an education in the spirit of philosophy.
Such conclusions as these might at least serve, we should suppose, as a working hypothesis, upon the basis of which we may consider in detail a variety of questions of the day. New problems have arisen before the eyes of the teacher, and indeed obtrude themselves upon all who must take part in the practical life of others. Some of these problems are due to changed external relations of countries to one another. Some are problems of internal adjustment and reconstruction. At least they may so be classified for purposes of discussion. In reality all changes are too closely bound up with one another to allow us to treat thempractically as independent. No nation any longer stands alone. Internationalism is an idea that penetrates all other practical ideas. And no internal problems of any nation can be wholly local. The world is in a peculiar but also an inspiring way at the present time a single field of labor for the educational thinker and indeed the teacher in every field of human life.
Among the many pedagogical questions raised and given new significance by the war, is that of the teaching about war and about peace. This is a question of ideals, and of values and the teaching of history. There are practical and superficial questions to be considered. There are also more profound problems, since all our teaching of good and evil is implicated. Shall we continue, in one moment, to assume that war is the greatest glory in the world, and in the next to condemn it as the greatest of evils? Shall we as teachers take the standpoint of pacifism? Or shall we be still apostles of the heroic order? This is really no simple matter, and it is not one to be laid aside, directly it begins to disturb us, as unimportant. No one passing through the experiences of the past four years can have wholly escaped this dilemma, or can have kept himself entirely aloof from the doubts and perplexities that must always be attached to religious and philosophical problems of good and evil. These doubts and hesitations are necessarily increased when we try to become consistent teachers and wise counselors of the young.
It would be of psychological interest at least to collect all the arguments and opinions that have been put forth about the good and evil of war. There is a tendency for moralists to go to extremes. The writers on war are likely to be either ardent pacifists or strong militarists. They do not try to strike a balance between good and evil, but war is either a great blessing upon mankind or the greatest curse of the ages. In general they do not seek to basetheir conclusions upon ultimate philosophical principles, but rather upon moral or biological principles, or, again, upon preferences for the activities of war or the arts of peace. How very different the good and evil of war and peace may seem from different points of view is well shown by the following excerpt from a daily newspaper:
A DEADLY PARALLELThis Is the Way Germany Talks to Young Boys of Scout AgeThis Is What the Scout Organization Teaches American BoysFrom the "Handbook for Boys,"17th edition, page 454."War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. For us, too, the glad great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the old women in breeches who fear war and deplore it as cruel and revolting. No; war is beautiful. Its august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly and the common. In the cloud palace above sit the heroes, Frederick the Great and Blucher and all the men of action—the Great Emperor, Moltke, Roon, Bismarck are there as well, but not the old women who would take away our joy in war. When here on earth a battle is won by German arms and the faithful dead ascend to Heaven, a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard to the door and 'Old Fritz' (Frederick the Great), springing from his golden throne, will give the command to present arms. That is the Heaven of Young Germany."Because only in war all the virtues which militarism regards highly are given a chance to unfold, because only in war the trulyheroic comes into play, for the realization of which on earth militarism is above all concerned; therefore, it seems to us who are filled with the spirit of militarism that war is a holy thing, the holiest on earth, and this high estimate of war in its turn makes an essential ingredient of the military spirit. There is nothing that trades-people complain of so much as that we regard it as holy.""The movement is one for efficiency and patriotism. It does not try to make soldiers of boy scouts, but to make boys who will turn out as men to be fine citizens, and who will if their country needs them make better soldiers for having been scouts. No one can be a good American unless he is a good citizen, and every boy ought to train himself so that as a man he will be able to do his full duty to the community. I want to see the boy scouts not merely utter fine sentiments, but act on them, not merely sing 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee,' but act in a way that will give them a country to be proud of. No man is a good citizen unless he so acts as to show that he actually uses the Ten Commandments, and translates the Golden Rule into his life conduct—and I don't mean by this exceptional cases under spectacular circumstances, but I mean applying the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule in the ordinary affairs of everyday life. I hope the boy scouts will practice truth and square dealing and courage and honesty, so that when as young men they begin taking a part not only in earning their own livelihood, but in governing the community, they may be able to show in practical fashion their insistence upon the great truth that the eighth and ninth commandments are directly related to everyday life, not only between men as such in their private relations, but between men and the government of which they are a part. Indeed, the boys, even while only boys, can have a very real effect upon the conduct of the grown-up members of the community, for decency and square dealing are just as contagious as vice and corruption."
"War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. For us, too, the glad great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the old women in breeches who fear war and deplore it as cruel and revolting. No; war is beautiful. Its august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly and the common. In the cloud palace above sit the heroes, Frederick the Great and Blucher and all the men of action—the Great Emperor, Moltke, Roon, Bismarck are there as well, but not the old women who would take away our joy in war. When here on earth a battle is won by German arms and the faithful dead ascend to Heaven, a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard to the door and 'Old Fritz' (Frederick the Great), springing from his golden throne, will give the command to present arms. That is the Heaven of Young Germany.
"Because only in war all the virtues which militarism regards highly are given a chance to unfold, because only in war the trulyheroic comes into play, for the realization of which on earth militarism is above all concerned; therefore, it seems to us who are filled with the spirit of militarism that war is a holy thing, the holiest on earth, and this high estimate of war in its turn makes an essential ingredient of the military spirit. There is nothing that trades-people complain of so much as that we regard it as holy."
"The movement is one for efficiency and patriotism. It does not try to make soldiers of boy scouts, but to make boys who will turn out as men to be fine citizens, and who will if their country needs them make better soldiers for having been scouts. No one can be a good American unless he is a good citizen, and every boy ought to train himself so that as a man he will be able to do his full duty to the community. I want to see the boy scouts not merely utter fine sentiments, but act on them, not merely sing 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee,' but act in a way that will give them a country to be proud of. No man is a good citizen unless he so acts as to show that he actually uses the Ten Commandments, and translates the Golden Rule into his life conduct—and I don't mean by this exceptional cases under spectacular circumstances, but I mean applying the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule in the ordinary affairs of everyday life. I hope the boy scouts will practice truth and square dealing and courage and honesty, so that when as young men they begin taking a part not only in earning their own livelihood, but in governing the community, they may be able to show in practical fashion their insistence upon the great truth that the eighth and ninth commandments are directly related to everyday life, not only between men as such in their private relations, but between men and the government of which they are a part. Indeed, the boys, even while only boys, can have a very real effect upon the conduct of the grown-up members of the community, for decency and square dealing are just as contagious as vice and corruption."
The praise of war takes many forms, and invokes many fundamental principles—ethical, æsthetic, biological, sociological. From Leibnitz' saying that perpetual peace is a motto fit only for a graveyard to Moltke's that peace is only a dream and not even a beautiful dream, there is a long list of defenses of war. This philosophy of war is by no means peculiarly German, although German writers seem to have been the most ardent apologists of war in recent times. Treitschke, Schmitz (29), Scheler (77), Nusbaum (86), Arndt, Steinmetz, Lasson, Engelbrecht, Schoonmaker, all sing the praises of war as the most glorious work of man, or as performing for civilization some noble good. Even Hegel said that wars invigorate humanity just as the storm preserves the sea from putrescence.
But this praise of war, we say, is by no means exclusively German. Thucydides thought war a noble school of heroism, the exercise ground of the nations. To Mohammed and his Arabs war seemed not only in itself a heroism, we are told, but a divine act. This belief in war as divine is an idea that is very wide-spread among primitive peoples. Cramb, the English writer, says that it is very easy todemonstrate that the glory of battle is an illusion, but by the same argument you may demonstrate that all glory and life itself is an illusion and a mockery. Redier says that the war has brought us all the noble joys so necessary to stimulate mankind, and one no longer finds happiness, therefore, in sleeping comfortably, but only in living bravely.
There is no lack, indeed, of recognition of the heroic motive in war. Sometimes the argument appeals to religion, sometimes to art, sometimes to morality. Sometimes the advocates of war are thinking of war as the great adventure. War and the thought of war induce an ecstasy, a glow of the feelings. War is thought of as an expression of normal, healthy life, as making life more abundant and more beautiful. War brings out fundamental virtues in the individual; it also destroys the weaker and the meaner race and leaves the strong and the virtuous. Struggle, they say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged that war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just arbiter of fate. The saving of the world through bloodshed, the uniting of the world through war, war as the great teacher of mankind, war as the creator of great personalities—all these are persistent themes in the literature of war. There is no place for the pacifist in the minds of these apologists of the heroic order. The crises of war are historic necessities; they come when it is time to release people from the bondage of the past and to bring individualistic generations back to the sense of duty and of loyalty to great causes. This is the belief of many, even now.
On the other side we find the great variety of pacifistic minds. War to the pacifists is wrong, unholy, morally sinful, biologically and economically and in every other way evil. The conscientious objector's point of view is very simple. War antagonizes some principle which is religiously or morally supreme for him. Therefore there canbe no justification of war whatever, and it ought to be abolished at any price. When you ask the objector to go to war, you invite him to commit a flagrant sin. The English literature of pacifism is full of this moral and religious protestation against war which in the minds of the objectors becomes a finality beyond which it is futile to ask them to go.
The psychological and the biological pacifists are hardly less emphatic in their condemnation of war. The biological thinker undertakes to refute the theory that war is selective. He counts the cost of war in terms of human life and of racial vitality, and produces a condemning document. That war indeed selects but selects unfavorably and in an adverse direction is the conclusion of many, among them Savorgnan in his book "La Guerra e la Populazione," in which he calls wardysgenic. The psychologist tends to see in war a reversion, a lapse to barbarism. War is a product of the original savage in man, whom civilization has never tamed, as Freud would say. War lingers because of man's love of old institutions. We cling to old habits and customs, which take on a semblance of the æsthetic, because of their antiquity and old associations. This is the explanation by Nicolai. Russell thinks men fight because they are still ignorant and despotic. Patrick thinks of war as a slip in the psychic machinery. MacCurdy (37) and others think of war as a mental or a social disease.
Upon the hardships of war, its economic futility and its sheer senselessness, when looked at from the standpoint of any rational desire, many base their conclusion that war is evil. The working man and all the masses are likely to concur in this opinion. When they examine war they see that they themselves as they think are used in the interest of the few, that they shed their blood for a glory in which they do not share. They say, all men are brothers, and so why should they kill one another. Men seem more real to them than do boundaries of countrieswhich they never see, and the interests of wealth that is also invisible.
Such thought as this has behind it some of the most powerful minds, as we know. It is Tolstoi's philosophy, and it is the argument of such men as Novicow. The professional economist and the student of history add their protests. They say that military peoples fade away, while the peaceful live and prosper, that "the country whose military power is irresistible is doomed." These are the words of Roberts. Some try to demonstrate that nothing is gained economically by war; that all the work of war is destructive, to every one engaged in it. It is argued that the nation that is suited to live will prevail without wars; and that without this inner superiority, war will avail nothing. War is bad business, in the opinion of these economic thinkers. War is like setting the dog on the customer at the door, the practical man in England complained at the beginning of the present war. As to war being associated with intelligence and with virtue in nations, or as to its ever producing either intellectual or moral qualities, many would flatly deny that war ever has such a result. The opposite would seem nearer the truth to them. Military nations are unintelligent nations, and militarism is always brutalizing.
Such pacifism and the dream of universal peace are no new ideas in the world. Like the philosophy of war pacifism has a long history. There have been pacifists everywhere and presumably at all times, since pacifism is quite as much a temperament as it is an idea or a philosophy. Cramb tells us that all recent centuries have had their doctrines of pacifism, each century having its own characteristic variety. In the time of the Marlborough wars, there appeared the book of Abbé de St. Pierre denouncing all wars. In the middle of the nineteenth century there is the doctrine of the Manchester school, maintaining that the peace of Europe must be secured not by religion, but by the coöperation of the industrial forces of the continent.Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of the twentieth century in the position that war is bad because it is contrary to social well-being and is economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function of the favored classes.
This is certainly not the place to try to put order into this conflicting mass of opinion about war and peace by working out the principles of a philosophy of good and evil, since this would mean to attack one of the most fundamental of all problems of philosophy. It seems to be plain, however, that neither upon biological grounds nor by ethical principles, nor by finding any consensus in the desires and opinions of thinkers can we reach any hard and fast conclusions about the good and evil of war. It is rather by a broad interpretation of the world and of history and the nature of national consciousness, by some genetic view of national life, that we are most likely to see our way toward a practical view of the present good and evil of war. War is a phase of the whole process of social development of nations. We think of nations as living and growing, and of a world which is gradually maturing. War obtains a natural explanation on sociological and psychological principles, not as a disease, but as a natural consequence and condition of the formation of nations, or of any type of horde or group. In the course of the development of nations we see psychological factors coming more and more to the front. Desires which are more or less consciously avowed become the motives of history. It is in the play of these desires: their fixation, their generalization, and transformation, the manner in which they become attached to specific objects, that we seekthe explanation of wars and of the especial psychology of nations. Nations have lived secluded and guarded lives, because of the nature of the desires which were most fundamental in their lives, and the objects upon which these desires have become directed. Now nations show some signs of emerging from their seclusion, of abandoning their ambitions of empire, and leading a more complex and more practical life.
In this progress we see the possibility of the final disappearance of war. But we have no right to pervert either history or education in the effort to eliminate war, or even to pass judgments upon war prematurely or upon the basis of personal preferences, or the moods of any moment. The whole world might, conceivably, be brought together and be made to declare solemnly that there should be no more war. Nations would thereby voluntarily relinquish their aggressive thoughts, put aside the love they have for the heroic and take justice and peace as their watchwords. And all this would seem ideal. But if the elimination of war should mean that we have no longer anything for which men are willing to die, if merely to escape from war we voluntarily sacrifice good that more than counterbalances the evil we overcome, we should say that peace had been bought at too high a price.Terrible as war is, it cannot be judged by itself alone.We have a right to look forward to a time when there shall be no more war, just as everywhere it seems to be instinctive for us to try to gain good without its attendant trouble and evil. In the meantime the world had best busy itself, mainly, in our view, with creating those things that are best, rather than in destroying those things that are worst. Nations, like individuals, must lead bravely hazardous lives, without too much thought of dangers. Peace as a sole program for the making of history appears to be too narrow, and especially too unproductive. Internationalism that is merely a combination of peoples to prevent war is not veryinspiring, especially since it is doubtful whether it even leads to peace. A broad historical view that will enable us just now to make good come out of the evil of war will be a better organ of conscious evolution than a philosophy of peace can possibly be.
Such views as these give us at least some clews to the educational and pedagogical problems of war and peace. We can distinguish between an education which deals specifically with such problems, endeavoring to treat them sharply and with finality, making clear moral decisions, and an education which by enriching the mind and by educating all the selective faculties leads to an appreciation of all great practical and moral questions as aspects of the whole of history and of life.
Let us see what the specific teaching of peace may and may not include. First of all we cannot, for educational purposes, judge everything in the lives of nations bymoralprinciples. The ideal of universal brotherhood and coöperation, of sacrifice and altruism, cannot be realized in the present stage of history. On the other hand, the stern picture of justice is one that fits into the present mood of the world. Justice is the natural link between individualism and altruism. A world determined upon seeing justice done, a world which, without setting absolute values upon peace and war, does distinguish between just and unjust wars, between the demands and the needs of peoples, leans toward the moral life. It has little to say about duties as yet, or comparatively little, but it has a strong conception of rights. A deep enough interest in justice, by its own momentum, introduces duties into the practical life. In time the world will perhaps not be satisfied with seeing and recognizing justice, and ensuring it in great crises; it will make justice as a matter of course.
This idea of justice seems, on the whole, to be the best basis for the teaching now of international morality. The teaching of pacifism, enlarging upon the biological wasteof war, trying to present the realism of war in its worst light in order to overcome the warlike spirit and to assist the doctrines of internationalism to take effect upon the mind seems to be the wrong way of teaching peace. We seem to be obligated to teach war as it is. We cannot conceal its heroic side for fear of perpetuating war, and we must not conceal the brutality of war for fear of destroying morale and the fighting spirit. And it is to be much doubted whether it isevernecessary to teach history unfairly and one-sidedly in times either of war or of peace. We depend upon larger effects and deeper judgments than can be produced by selecting and distorting the facts. Nothing is meaner in national life than dishonest history.
Education in the ideal of peace, which we may hope to be the state of the world in the future, will be an adjustment of the mind to new and practical modes of life rather than the establishing of a principle. The educated attitude of mind which will best safeguard the peace of the world must include an intelligent knowledge of all the agencies proposed to aid in establishing this state of harmony toward which we look forward. We must all know about arbitration, leagues of nations, courts of honor, understand diplomacy better and the arguments for disarmament, understand the economic and the industrial situation, the possibilities of coöperation, reduction of the rights and privileges of classes, democratic movements. The inculcation of such knowledge is an education for peace. There is little that is abstruse in any of these ideas, and the very young child is not too young to know something of these wider aspects of the social life. All these may be presented in a concrete form as a part of the work of conveying a knowledge of current history.
We may think of various cures for war, and various efforts that might be made educationally to prevent war. Peace might effectually be cultivated by an educational propaganda. But after all it is not such cures ofwar as this that we are most concerned about in the work of education. We might even tend to establish in this way a peace which would be detrimental to the higher interests of civilization.A true educational philosophy, at any rate, is not to be dislodged from its purpose of keeping education constructive rather than inhibitory.This institution of education must not be too much influenced by the temporary moods of the day, by the present gloomy evidences of the devastation of war. We must teach and prepare for an abundant life in which there is glory and wide opportunity, and in which the motives of power may be satisfied. Then peace can take care of itself. But this abundant life must be a life ofactivity, not of mere patriotism and subjective glorification and nationalistic interest. Vanity, the low order of enthusiasms, the glory of display, can no longer have a place in this national life.
There appears to be a pedagogical lesson in the contrast between the heroic and the moral view of teaching war and peace illustrated by the German philosophy of war and the ideal of the Boy Scout organization. Deducting something for literary exaggeration, we may say that education cannot afford to neglect either of these attitudes, but must indeed in some way combine them. The exaggeration consists on one side in praising the specific act of war; but on the other side there is plainly lacking something of the dramatic appeal which any ideal life for the young must have. War is an evil, but the spirit that makes war is by no means an evil. The philosophy of war proves its failure by ignoring the moral ideal altogether, or regarding morality as something solely national, but the other, it may be, puts the moral ideal in a pedagogically impossible position. Both the content and the form must be taken into account in any educational plan that hopes to exert power or to be influential in any important way now, and it is the form which, more than anything else, is still lacking in our whole procedure of education.