e of his merits the noblest savage falls short in several ways.
Yet it is important in education to perfect the physical powers and the
animal development in every child. Pestalozzi touched the hearts of
even the weakest and morally frailest children, and tried to make
improved physical conditions and intellectual culture contribute to
heart culture, or rather to combine the two in strong moral character.
He came close upon the highest aim of education and was able to
illustrate his doctrine in practice. The educational reformers have
gone far ahead of the schoolmasters in setting up a high aim in
education.

Let us examine a few well-known definitions of education by great
thinkers, and try to discover a central idea.

"The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all
the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable."--_Plato_.

"Education includes whatever we do for ourselves and whatever is done
for us by others for the express purpose of bringing us nearer to the
perfection of our nature."--_John Stuart Mill_.

"Education is the preparation for complete living."--_Herbert Spencer_.

"Education is the harmonious and equable evolution of the human
faculties by a method based upon the nature of the mind for developing
all the faculties of the soul, for stirring up and nourishing all the
principles of life, while shunning all one-sided culture and taking
account of the sentiments upon which the strength and worth of men
depend."--_Stein_.

"Education is the sum of the reflective efforts by which we aid nature
in the development of the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties
of man in view of his perfection, his happiness, and his social
destination."--_Compayre_.

These attempts to bring the task of education into a comprehensive,
scientific formula are interesting and yet disappointing. They agree
in giving great breadth to education. But in the attempt to be
comprehensive, to omit nothing, they fail to specify that wherein the
_true worth_ of man consists; they fail to bring out into relief the
highest aim as an organizing idea in the complicated work of education
and its relation to secondary aims.

We desire therefore to approach nearer to this problem: _What is the
highest aim of education_?

We will do so by an inquiry into the aims and tendencies of our public
schools. To an outward observer the schools of today confine their
attention almost exclusively to the ac