y and in the object world.
Here we can put our finger on the radical weakness of our school work.

The really soul-inspiring teachers have not been formalists nor
drill-masters alone. Friedrich August Wolf, for example, the great
German philologist, was probably the most inspiring teacher of
classical languages that Germany has had. But to what was his
remarkable influence as a teacher of young men due? We usually think
of a philologist as one who digs among the roots of dead languages, who
worships the forms of speech and the laws of grammar. Doubtless he and
his pupils were much taken up with these things, but they were not the
prime source of his and their interest. Wolf defined philology as "the
knowledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity." He studied with
great avidity everything that could throw light upon the lives,
character, and language of the ancients. Their biographies, histories,
geography, climate, dress, implements, their sculpture, monuments,
buildings, tombs. Approaching the literature and language of the
Greeks with this abundant knowledge of their real surroundings and
conditions of life, he saw the deeper, fuller significance of every
classical author and the great literary masterpieces were perceived as
the expression of the national life. He appreciated language as the
wonderful medium through which the more wonderful life of the versatile
Greek expressed itself. The reason he was such a great philologist was
because he was so great a realist, a man who was intensely interested
in the Greek people, their history and life. Words alone had little
charm for him. No great teacher has been simply a word-monger.

For the present we leave the question of discipline unanswered, though
we are disposed to think that those studies which introduce children to
the two great fields of real knowledge, and which arouse a strong
desire to solve the problems found there, will also furnish the most
valuable discipline.

The _formal studies_ such as reading, spelling, writing, language, and
much of arithmetic, have thus far appropriated the best share of school
time. They are the tools for acquiring and formulating knowledge
rather than knowledge itself. They are so indispensable in life that
people have acquired a sort of superstitious respect for them. They
are generally considered as of primary importance while other things
are taken as secondary. By virtue of this excessive estimation the