THE FACTOR OF MARKET PRICE. 15

posed as the aim of every true educator.

And the market price of any product, or of the producer, is an important factor, which cannot be left out in education.

That the vast majority of mankind are condemned, as some would say, to work for their daily bread, proves conclusively that work for daily bread is a noble order of life, as it is in accordance with a natural law. And either in itself, or in qualities called out by it, this work of the majority must give scope for all that makes life truly valuable; even though the market price of it may not be high. But whether market price is high, or low, for the work done by any individual, no man can afford to keep all his life apart from it; no man can escape from its range. It meets the educator as the first important form of power. There is no greater mistake than to disregard the natural laws by which life works, unless indeed it is exaggerating the importance of one or another, and turning your hewer of wood and drawer of water into a god, because of the immediate advantage of his help.

Power therefore is the end proposed. But already on the threshold a great difficulty of determining what is power has appeared. Yet till something is settled on this question education is at a standstill, or blindfold. It is moreover the province of a teacher to know why he teaches as

16

THE BEST LIFE-POWER.

well as what he teaches, and how to teach. Not unfrequently the first beginning of true work is a clear perception of the value of the work to be done; and the ability to excite interest by giving that perception to others. To leave for the present the dictum "Knowledge is power" on one side, and all other random dicta about power; the practical question presents itself in a very definite shape. The practical question is, what process will turn a man out best fitted to do life work, and enable mankind as a race to do their best? as definite a question, as the question, what process is necessary to make a deal box? And the first answer to this question is equally definite, and clear; that process, namely, which best produces power in man himself, and makes him most capable of employing his faculties in the best way. This gives a starting point at once. Power in a man's self is the work of education; and how to produce it the inquiry.

As this is a practical question put forth with the intention of finding what a teacher and trainer ought to do to train the best men, and why he ought to do it? and how? a practical example of the commonest form of power, compulsive force, and its effects will serve as a platform to begin on. The Slave toiling beneath his master's whip is a living parable coextensive with created things. It contains within its compass the whole

PARABLE OF THE SLAVE.

17

And

problem of power; that is, of the right, or wrong use of life. On the one side is skill and strength wielding the whip, and on the other an embodiment of life producing saleable work under the lash. And the vulgar call the visible Whip, and its influence, power; and the product, wealth; and the whip is an instrument through which the mind of the master works. In other words there exists in the mind of the man, who uses the whip, a quality, by whatever name it may be called, or be it nameless, which comes to light in force, the force of the whip, or any other force, that gives it expression. the slave, a living being, obeys the whip, and the whip-holder is called his master, and said to have power over him; and by this power gets a certain kind of marketable goods. But what is the whip master of? this hard, compulsive power, which man wields over man. It is master of a certain amount of movement of arm or leg. That is all. At every stroke of the lash, the real creature, as distinct from the working machine, hides itself. At every stroke of the lash, the love and hate, which is the man himself, and, which, whenever he does man's true work, passes into that work, retires farther and farther into the depths of the cavernous heart out of sight. And the more the lash is applied the greater the unapproachable distance becomes between the master of the lash and the

18

WHIP-POWER AND life.

real being before him, or any true revelation of the inner life of that being. The whip has power over an animated machine. But everything belonging to the being of man as man, distinct from a moving animal, or a skilfully constructed engine, retires before the aggressive pretensions of force, and its stolid lash, into inaccessible fastnesses, unheeded, and despised; until in some hour of vengeance the pent up torrent of life leaps forth, and bears wild witness to the supreme energies of the inner being, which the kings of fools-paradise have long treated as non-existent, because they did not see it, and chose to think their control over outward movement, power. This is the great parable of force dealing with life, and the worth of life. And whether the whip-power is in one hand, and the work is extorted from another; or whether the whip-power and the work are in the same person, when a man does his own work at the bidding of his own hard will; or whether again in either case the whip-holder exults in his whip-power, or not, makes no difference, the result is the same. A low form of external power is at work capable of producing external action, and satisfying external needs. And the providing for the mere life of man, and its needs, whether done voluntarily, or under compulsion, falls within this area. So likewise does every subject, which does not call the

THE MENTAL WHIP.

19

feelings, and their truer life into play. There is a hard, mechanic power of mind, which in theory always, and in practice often, is quite disconnected from man's real self, and his true nature as man, which nevertheless makes a great external show in the world as machine power of a high order, busy with the cogs, and wheels, and visible manufacturing of society and Government. But the distinction between all work of brain that can be conceived of as carried out by beautifully subtle machinery, marvellous automata, that might be imagined, of intelligent force, and the feeblest, tenderest birth of human thought, requiring man to think it, and breathing the breath of man's nature, is very real, and a most vital truth in anything worthy the name of education. Mental factory wheels, and the scintillations of life are different in kind, and might belong to two different worlds, though both are packed together in man's being.

To carry this on a step farther. This truth is the same truth, whenever force deals with life and the works of life; whether force finds expression in the whip, and the pitiless hand compelling external work, at the price of exile from all true feeling; or is embodied in the forceful intellect tearing its way into the external knowledge of externals at the price of exile from life. The same law holds good through the whole world of man's physical and