A Great Teacher
Charles W. Eliot : The Man and his Beliefs. (Harpers. 2 vols. : 42s.) Pz a ro taught that the laborious classes in a model common. wealth needed no education whatever. President Eliot called this an extraordinary opinion, but in his inaugural address before Harvard University in 1869 he stated that : " The . Community does not owe - superior education to all children, but only to the elite—to those who, having the capacity, prove Ly hard work that they have also the necessary perseverance and endurance,"
In these days of extravagant and indiscriminate expendi- ture on education this is an opinion worth noting, coming as it does from a man whose contribution to educational develop- ment in America may be likened to that of Arnold of Rugby, a generation earlier in a slightly different sphere. These men did more to raise that indescribable quality known as " tone " in their respective countries than any others.
Born in 1834 at Boston, son of a well-to-do importer who lost his fortune in the panic of 1857, William C. Eliot graduated from Harvard at the age of nineteen. His interests were chemistry and mathematics, and after spending two years in Europe he returned to his native city as Professor of Chemistry in the new Institute of Technology. As a result of his articles on education, which aroused lively discussion, he was selected.to succeed the Rev. Thomas Hill as the head and chief executive of his alma mater.
He was thirty-five when he became President of Harvard, and at once began a new era in American University education. He favoured freedom in the *choice of studies and opportunity to win distinction in single subjects.
In the seven hundred odd pages of the two volumes under review a vast variety of subjects are dealt with. Of the problems of his day which still engage the minds of this generation are those concerning the abandonment of war and women's place in public affairs. His belief in democracy pervades all his sayings. In his essay on " Democracy and Manners " he professes to believe that under republican institutions the diffusion of good manners are commoner than under any other governmental institutions. The expe- rience of travellers hardly supports this idea. But when he comes to " America's contribution to civilization," Dr. Eliot is on surer ground. Chief of these is the abandonment of war. If the intermittent Indian fighting and the brief con- tests with the Barbary corsairs be disregarded, the United States up to the Great War had only four years and a-quarter of international war in over one himdred years since the adoption of the Constitution. Within the same period the United States were party to forty-seven arbitrations, being more than half of all that had taken place in the modern world. And now Mr. Kellogg's proposals to outlaw war may be regarded as another contribution to civilization. Dr. Eliot held the belief, almost universal among Americans, that within the United States alone was to be found liberty and freedom of speech and action. He remarks that " one of the most extraordinary phenomena in connexion- with this ferocious war is the unanimous opinion among Gentian scholars, statesmen and diplomats that ' We Germans are just as free as you Americans.' " To which Dr. Eliot retorts that " the German people do not know what liberty is—they have no conception of such liberty as we enjoy or the liberty England has won through Parliamentary government." '
To this I would suggest that Germany has never known such restrictions of liberty as Prohibition, nor has she suffered such an affliction as " Dora-." Incidentally; - in no couPtry. is7Communist propaganda so strictly forbidden as in the U.S.A.
Another prevalent error is stated in the following terms : ".Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the mental condition of an average American belonging to the laborious classes but conscious that he can rise to the top of the social scale, and that of a European mechanic, peasant or tradesman, who knows he cannot rise out of .his class and is content with his hereditary classification." With the recent elamples of a British Prime Minister, a Lord Chancellor, a Lord Chief Justice, a Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for ILdia and a Field-Marshal all of the humblest origin, and with the spectacle of a Mussolini, a Pilsudski, &c., this American attitude is subject to correction. Just as much as the United States, England, at least, is a land of unlimited possibilities.
Of the higher education of women, Dr. Eliot asserts that ypung women can learn all the more difficult subjects of education just as well as young men. The professions have not been invaded. The immense majority of women go into the occupation of bearing children or bringing up other people's children. Why has not that advantage been seized by leaders in the higher education of women ? Because that single occupation has not generally been regarded as an intellectual occupation. " I venture to think this is one of the greatest mistakes civilized men and women have committed. The one great occupation of women is the most intellectual in the world. It calls—often in vain—for carefully trained powers, sound thinking, moral perception. I say, therefore, that preparation for this normal occupation of women should be the main object of the training in the higher education. It his not been thought of in this way."
When Eliot resigned from the Presidency of Harvard, after forty years of service, he became the counseller of the nation at large and a leader of public opinion. His book still speaks for him ; every page of these two volumes of addresses contains wit and wisdom.
N. G. TrivrArrEs.
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