responsible for all, and separate interests were unknown. This enforced public sense, behind which she did not at that time go, became in later years a conscious principle guiding her life, and one which she longed to see guiding the lives of all. To get anything at the cost of another was impossible for her; to keep anything which another might need, painful. She suffered with those whom she saw suffer. Righteousness is, after all, merely the daily love of man of man in his divinity, weakness, aspirations, errors, interests, and idiosyncrasies. She was essentially true, hating humbug in all its disguises. Being a keen observer, she knew a fact when she saw it and did not juggle with herself by calling things what they are not. Her love of plainness and distaste for affectation were forms of veracity. . . . In every call of human need she heard the voice of God, summoning her to free his children from selfishness and woe. The love of God, it has been well said, is devotion to duty intensified in intellectual clearness and in emotional strength by the conviction that its aim is also that of a great personality. This courage-bringing conviction she had. All her morality was therefore touched with a divine

emotion. Her aims were unified. In solitude and suffering she was not alone. She knew that the stars in their courses shone on her designs, and accessible love throbbed through all things."1

These great personalities had certain qualities and elements in common. They embodied greatness of intellect, of course, but a greatness in heart greater than in intellect, and comprehensively, a greatness of noble char

acter.

They were, as a class, sane, whole, sound. They were free from those peculiarities which make the unique and rich career of such a leader as Mark Pattison conspicuous. Most of them were devoid of genius. Each had a desire to be useful. They were opportunists in the best sense; and yet possessed of a sense of idealism, persistent, yet yielding in administration, yielding, yet persistent; and always inspired by highest public aims. Few were great scholars, although each and all were in deep sympathy with scholars and appreciative of scholarship. Each was a rich and fine personality, and each definitely embodied the

1 The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, pp. 262, 227, 229, 291, 816, 340, 342, 346.

best qualities of the gentleman or the lady. American education has not enlarged the field of learning as has the German, but no land has in its education produced greater or finer personalities than America.

CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

WHEN one reviews comprehensively the history of these forty years, he asks the inevitable question, "Does the close of the period bear witness to a better education than the beginning beheld?" In answer he is obliged at once to discriminate.

This history makes evident the conclusion that the influence of the public schools over the vast body of the people has greatly enlarged and improved. It is evident that the knowledge which the ordinary people receive is much broader. The ordinary man knows more about the world, its history, its peoples, and its manifold and diverse life; he learns with greater facility, and his possession of facts is of larger variety. The more frequent and swifter communication between different parts of the globe has contributed to this result. The globe grows smaller, and its inhabitants are united in a closer neighborliness. This increase of learning is the result, in part,

of the improved methods of teaching and of discipline. The teacher is of no greater natural power or charm; the growth of the people in

riches and in a sense of world-relations has not enlarged his capacities to an appreciable degree. The last half-century is not unlike in this respect to other half-centuries or whole centuries of human history. Nature remains a more important element in character than nurture. But the method of teaching and of government has greatly improved. This improvement is well summed up in the word "natural." The public school has learned to take the pupil as he is, and to train him by wholesome rules and sound principles unto a larger learning and a richer life. The improvement in discipline and government lies in the casting out of chastisement as punitive and in the introduction of it as educative. The effectiveness of both teaching and government has been enhanced by the improvement in environment. Schoolhouses have become more fit, with clearer light and purer air, with seats more hygienic and all sanitary conditions made more satisfactory. Playgrounds are laid out larger and plays have received distinct encouragement, both in number and variety, from all teachers.