has no idea whether Talleyrand lived in the
fifteenth or the eighteenth century, or whether Calvin was a Frenchman
or a Scotchman.

Our clever people are content merely with being clever. They will talk
Tolstoi or Turgenieff with you, but they are quite vague about Catherine
II or Peter the Great. They are up on D'Annunczio, but not on Garibaldi
or Cavour. Our ladies wear a false front of culture, but they are quite
bald underneath.

* * * * *

Being educated, however, does not consist, by any means, in knowing who
fought and won certain battles or who wrote the Novum Organum. It lies
rather in a knowledge of life based on the experience of mankind. Hence
our study of history. But a study of history in the abstract is
valueless. It must be concrete, real and living to have any significance
for us. The schoolboy who learns by rote imagines the Greeks as outline
figures of one dimension, clad in helmets and tunics, and brandishing
little swords. That is like thinking of Jeanne d'Arc as a suit of armor
or of Theodore Roosevelt as a pair of spectacles.

If the boy is to gain anything by his acquaintance with the Greeks he
must know what they ate and drank, how they amused themselves, what they
talked about, and what they believed as to the nature and origin of the
universe and the probability of a future life. I hold that it is as
important to know how the Romans told time as that Nero fiddled while
his capital was burning. William the Silent was once just as much alive
as P.T. Barnum, and a great deal more worth while. It is fatal to regard
historical personages as lay figures and not as human beings.

We are equally vague with respect to the ordinary processes of our daily
lives. I have not the remotest idea of how to make a cup of coffee or
disconnect the gas or water mains in my own house. If my sliding door
sticks I send for the carpenter, and if water trickles in the tank I
telephone for the plumber. I am a helpless infant in the stable and my
motor is the creation of a Frankenstein that has me at its mercy. My
wife may recall something of cookery--which she would not admit, of
course, before the butler--but my daughters have never been inside a
kitchen. None of my family knows anything about housekeeping or the
prices of foodstuffs or house-furnishings. My coal and wood are
delivered and paid for without my inquiring as to the correctness of the
bills, and I offer the same temptati