tained in this way, nor in any way except by reading the best
literature.

The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, and
learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most
farcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity by
the other current idea, that literature is something separate and apart
from general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought and
experience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life and
explains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largely
in books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe,
that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, and
guide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of a
textbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up to
college almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and of
the ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never read a
book, except the text-books on the specialties in which they have
prepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning people
whose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that they have
no atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we live, and
move, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read to, or
read by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the world and
the thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the living
teacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books,
will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, the
teacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of the
function of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to present
evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it? Why, in
experimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in good
literature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in selecting
reading for children is to make it impossible for them to see any
evidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how few
understand their business! How few are educated! In the best literature
we find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence, if children
read that, they read what their experience will verify. I am told that
publishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading used in
schools--that schools would gladly receive the good