iend represents is tenfold worse
than witchcraft, measured by the same standards. If there is any lesson
that human history teaches with compelling force, it is surely this:
Every race which has yielded to the demon of individualism and the lust
for gold and self-gratification has gone down the swift and certain road
to national decay. Every race that, through unusual material prosperity,
has lost its grip on the eternal verities of self-sacrifice and
self-denial has left the lesson of its downfall written large upon the
pages of history. I repeat that if superstition consists in believing
something that is inconsistent with rational human experience, then our
present worship of the golden calf is by far the most dangerous form of
superstition that has ever befuddled the human intellect.

But, you ask, what can education do to alleviate a condition of this
sort? How may the weak influence of the school make itself felt in an
environment that has crystallized on every hand this unfortunate
standard? Individualism is in the air. It is the dominant spirit of the
times. It is reenforced upon every side by the unmistakable evidences of
national prosperity. It is easy to preach the simple life, but who will
live it unless he has to? It is easy to say that man should have social
and not individual standards of success and achievement, but what effect
will your puerile assertion have upon the situation that confronts us?

Yes; it is easier to be a pessimist than an optimist. It is far easier
to lie back and let things run their course than it is to strike out
into midstream and make what must be for the pioneer a fatal effort to
stem the current. But is the situation absolutely hopeless? If the
forces of education can lift the Japanese people from barbarism to
enlightenment in two generations; if education can in a single century
transform Germany from the weakest to the strongest power on the
continent of Europe; if five short years of a certain type of education
can change the course of destiny in China;--are we warranted in our
assumption that we hold a weak weapon in this fight against Mammon?

I have intimated that the attitude of my engineer friend toward life is
the result of twisted ideals. A good many young men are going out into
life with a similar defect in their education. They gain their ideals,
not from the great wellsprings of human experience as represented in
history and literature, in religion and art, but fr