Red Lodge picket. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1889-1907, 1895-07-13
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT BUTLER
What knowledge Is of Most WORTH"
q Subject Admirably Handled.


At the evening session the church was
filed. DR.. A. G.. Lane Of Chicago, vice
president, presided Nicholas Butler.
president, gave his annual address:
What knowledge Is of the Most
Worth?' He spoke in part follows:
The question that | am asking-what
knowledge is of most WORTH a very
old one, and the answers to it that have
been handed down through centuries are
many and various. 1t is a question that
each age must put to itself and answer
from The standpoint Of its deepest and
widest knowledge. The wiscst phloaO-
piers have always seen, more or less
clearly, the far-reaching character Of the
question ana the great Importance Of the
answer. Socrates and Plato, Augustine
and AquinaS, We're under no Illusions as
to it; but often in later years the deeper
questions relating to educational values;
have been either lost sight of entirely or
very Snperticially dealt with. Bacon
clothes in attractive automatic form some
very crude judgments to the relative
worth of studies. Rousseau risks his rep
utation for sobriety Of judgment in out
lining an educational program. Herbert
Spencer turns aside for a moment from
his life work to apotheosiz science in ed
ucation, although science is, by his own
definition, only partially-uniticd knowl-
Suage only less eXtraVagant than that in
which Sir William Hamilton decries it.
The very latest cry is that studies and
intellectual exercises are valuable in pro
portion they stimulate enlarged brain
areas; thus making the appreciation OF
Shakspere, of Beethoven. and of Leonar-
do da Ninc solely a function Of the circu-
lation of the blood.
But to sciolists of this type philosophy
Ike
swer. If it be true that spirit and reason
rule the universe, then the highest and
most enduring knowledge is of the things
of the spirit. That subtle sense of the
beautiful and the sublime which accom-
paneS spiritual insight, and is part of it,
is the highest achievement of which hui
manity is capable. This sense is typticd,
iii various forms, in the verse of Dante
and the prose outpourings of Thomas
kempiS in the SiStine Madonna of Raph-
ael, and in Mozart's Requiem To develop
this sense in education is the task of
art and literature, to interpret it is the
work of philosophy, and to nourish it the
function Of religion.
The ways of approach to this goal are
as many as there are human interests,
for they are all bound together in the
bonds of common origin and common
purpose. The attainment of it is true Cul
ture. as Mr.. Matthew Arnold has defined
it: "the acquainting ourselves with the
best that has been known and said in the
world, and thus with the history of the
human spirit.
one side of this truth was expressed BY
Schelling when he taught that nature is
the embryonic life of spirit and by Froe-
bel when he worte, THE spirit of God
rests in nature, lives and reigns in nature.
is expressed in nature, is communicated
by nature, is developed and cultivated in
nature" The controversy as to the ed
ucational value of science, SO far, at least.
as il concerns educational standards and
ideals is then illuso1y vnc. is q
mimic war, with words alone as weapons,
that is fought either to eXpel nature from
education on to subordinate all else in ed
ucation to ii.
We must enlarge, then. our conception
of the humanites, for humanity is broad
tr and deeper than we have hitherto sus-
pected
This conclusion, which would welcome
science with open arms into the school
and utilize its opportunities and adVan
tageS at every stage Of education. does
not mean that all studies are of equal ed
ucational value, or that they are mutual
ly and indifferently interchangeab
are the parts of some machines. 1t means
rather that the study Of nature is enti-
tied to recognition on grounds similar to
those put forward for the study of litera-
ture, of art, and of history. But among
themselves these divisions Of knowledge
fail into an order of excellence as educa-
tional material that is determined by their
respective relations to the development
of the reflective reason The application
of this test must must inevitably lead us
while honoring science and insisting upon
it's study, to place above it the study OF
history, of literature. of art, and of inSti-
tutonal life. But these studies may not
for 4 moment be carried on without the
study af nature or in neglect Of it.