Education and the Philosophical Ideal by Horatio W. Dresser - Read the Complete Text for free at NewThoughtLibrary.com

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Horatio W. Dresser's

Education and the Philosophical Ideal

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Preface - Introduction - The New Point of View - Educational Ideals - Equanimity - The Subconscious Mind - The Spiritual Ideal in Childhood - An Experiment in Education - The Expression of the Spirit - An Ideal Summer Conference - The Ministry of the Spirit - The Mystery of Pain and Evil - The Philosophical Ideal - The Criteria of Truth - Organic Perfection - Immortality - Index - p. 247

Suppose for a moment that things had been ordered as one of these hypersensitive or aristocratic critics would have chosen. Suppose your own most fondly cherished Utopian scheme could have been substituted for the world-system now in vogue. Would the universe have been either perfect or painless, to say nothing of its habitability?

What sort of life would man have lived had he been born perfect, wise, free from pain and the temptations of moral evolution? Judging from what we know of life as it exists to-day, the man who is without the spur of suffering in some form does not think, does not grow. It is a law of life as we find it that man grows strong through contest and wise through victory. If philosophic thought goes with it, the man who has suffered most is the wisest, the most sympathetic, the most broadly helpful. Without the sharp pangs of pain, man is too easily contented to trouble himself about either self-development or the good of others. Had he been born perfectly sane and altruistic, life would have been very much like existence in the orthodox heaven with its monotonous psalm-singing along the golden streets, or the Buddhistic Nirvana where all work ceases.

Work is the glory of man, and the zest of work is that priceless conquest of obstacles which tests human ingenuity to the full. It is use alone which enables man either to add to, or to keep his strength. It is individual contact with and study of the great realities of life which alone teaches their meaning

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