of a people is the history of its
civilization. Its civilization is not to be found in its material
success, nor in its achievements in arms; but its civilization is
manifest in its intellectual, moral, and esthetic development. It
follows, then, that the education of a nation is to be found in the
characteristics of its civilization; this includes religion, politics,
justice, art, and mode of thought. The history of education fully
attests this fact.

The government of Egypt was monarchical in form. The ruling classes
were educated; the lower classes were not; yet while they were the
beasts of burden and forced to toil under the most exacting
taskmasters they were of a mild and kind disposition, the result of
their religious training.

The government of the Jews was Theocratic; their civilization was
distinctively religious; their education was along religious lines.
Their poets sing of the love, the power, the majesty, and the
everlasting dominion of "I AM THAT I AM." Through the Jews indeed are
all the nations of the earth blessed, in that they have preserved and
transmitted through the ages the religion of their King and His
Anointed.

Greece had two distinct ideas of government. The Dorian, as
exemplified by the laws of Sparta, whose fundamental principle was
that the individual existed for the state and must obey the behests of
the state. The Ionian, as we find it in the constitution of Athens,
whose basic principle was that the state existed for the individual
and the individual was a freeman. The educational system of Sparta was
entirely military, in keeping with the aim and purpose of the state.
The boys at the tender age of seven years were taken from their homes
and placed in state schools to be taught the art of war, and how to
endure all of its hardships and privations. The educational system at
Athens reflected the aim and purpose of the Athenian State; it was
humanistic. The intellectual, ethical, and physical powers of the
child were developed. In that little peninsula of Southern Europe
there were two distinct civilizations having very little in common and
always antagonistic. Sparta developed human machines, men of great
physical force, but contributed nothing to the civilization of the
world, nothing for the betterment of mankind. Liberty, patriotism,
love of home and kindred, are the characteristics of the Athenian
civilization. The contributions of Athens for the civilization of the
world and