speak of less agreeable things. But the
same is true of a physician, merchant, or farmer, in different ways.
Shall we answer to all this that schools were never designed to teach
such things? They belong to professions or to the school of life, etc.

But it is not simply in professions and trades that we find this close
mingling and dependence of the most divergent sorts of knowledge, this
unscientific mixing of the sciences. Everywhere knowledge, however
well classified, is one-sided and misleading, which does not conform to
the conditions of real life. A wise _mother_ in her household has a
variety of problems to meet. From cellar to garret, from kitchen to
library, from nursery to drawing-room, her good sense must adapt all
sorts of knowledge to real conditions. In bringing up her children she
must understand physical and mental orders and disorders. She must
judge of foods and cooking, of clothing, as to taste, comfort, and
durability; of the exercises and employments of children, etc. Whether
she is conscious of it or not, she must mingle a knowledge of
chemistry, psychology, physiology, medicine, sanitation, the physics of
light and air, with the traditional household virtues in a sort of
universal solvent from which she can bring forth all good things in
their proper time and place. As Spencer says, education should be a
preparation for complete living; or, according to the old Latin maxim,
we learn _non scholae sed vitae_. The final test of a true mastery and
concentration of knowledge in the mind is the ability to use it readily
in the varied and tangled relations of actual experience.

We are accustomed to take refuge behind the so-called "mental
discipline" that results from studies, whether or not anything is
remembered that bears upon the relations of life. There are doubtless
certain formal habits of mind that result from study even though, like
Latin, it is cast aside as an old garment at the end of school days.
Transferring our argument then to this ground, is there any "habit of
thinking" more valuable than that _bent of mind_ which is not satisfied
with the mere memorizing of a fact but seeks to interpret its value by
judging of its influence upon other facts and their influence upon it?
No subject is understood by itself nor even by its relation to other
facts in the same science, but by its relation to the whole field of
knowledge and experience. Unless it can be proven that the study of