Evolution Of The Educational Ideal

Let lis place ourselves apart from the tumult whicli rages on both sides, and, closing our ears, question onrselyet whetheranew educational ideal may be evolved from this strife of contendinjs factions and what the general eharacter of this ideal would be. If we assume that the three features which I have meutioued niay be combined, we should have a popular, realistic, individualistic ideal of education - popular, not exclusive or aristocratie in the narrowei sense of the word; national, not foreign or international, but rather the result of an evolution from the national life itself; realistic, characterized by strength and action and uot by mere thought and sesthetic sentiment; individualistic - i. e., aiming at the development of the individual and uot at the establishment of dull uniformity; not democratie, therefore, if this word iraply a general reduction to a dead level, but rather aristocratie, in the sense oí an individual, uot a class, aristocracy. It would be presumptuous at the present day to state what the concrete forin of such an educational ideal would be. I wish to say, however, that the society corresponding to the. above ideal would be that of an aristocracy oí mind. Is this the type toward which we are tending? Is the aristocracy oí birth and wealth to be supplanted by the aristocracy of personal worth and merit? This has been the phüosopher's dream from the day of Plato's "Republio" to the present hour. It is the tendency of natura It would be the aristocracy of nature to have every individual stand independently upon his own personal merit and not upon the