This book, therefore, is an attempt to discuss some of the fundamental presuppositions of education. It is a series of essays, somewhat closely related, upon a few of the subjects which I believe that we who follow the profession of teaching must perpetually keep turning over in our minds in order that clear ideas upon them may shape and control our work. " I have attempted not only to set forth my own views upon these problems, but, when opportunity offered, to reenforce them by the statements of other men. Have you ever observed that we pay more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?" writes Hamerton. I have felt that I had a duty to attempt to secure for some wise passages which bear very immediately upon the theory of education as much attention as I can. The notions of education which I have attempted to outline I have learned chiefly from Socrates and Plato. My indebtedness to two living teachers, Professor John Dewey and Professor Frank McMurry, I gratefully acknowledge; it will be apparent to everyone who may do me the honor to turn the leaves of this book. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS ERNEST C. MOORE Hamlet.... Will you play upon this pipe? Hamlet. I pray you. Guildenstern. Believe me, I cannot. Hamlet. I do beseech you. Guildenstern. I know no touch of it, my lord. Hamlet. It is as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. Guildenstern. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill. Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood! do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.— - SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, III, ii "All architecture," said Whitman, " is what you do to it when you look upon it... all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.". Quoted in the article, "Railway Junctions" in The Unpopular Review, Vol. II, No. 3 Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place; give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. PLATO, Phædrus, 279 For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. — LUKE xvii, 21 Agesilaus was once asked what he thought most proper for boys to learn. What they ought to do when men, was the reply. — MONTAIGNE |