The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-28
MnRALIMPROYEMENT

MORAL IMPROVEMENT.
 It is no new thing for President Stanley Hall of Clark University to give utterance to views which evince an utter lack of the two qualities most essential in the educator ot youth, humor and imagination. His latest pronOunciamento is merely what should be expected from such man of morals. He has been expressing his ideas concerning a censorship Of JuV- emile libraries. All books that do not tend to moral improvement" should be eliminated, he declares. The phrase has odious associations, but it need not necessarily be objectionable. President Hall has, however, no mo- ton of having his meaning mistaken. He is hopelessIy specific. He mentions such injurious volumes as Alice in Wonderland' and Water Babies" as noticeably departing from his narrow standard. In other words, Dr. Hall dis approves in toto the imaginative quail ity in the young and would do his best to suppress it. He can with se- curity lay to his soul the fiattering unetion that it will at least not be his fault if the next generation does not consist of perfectly developed i specimens of effete piety, unredeemed 1 by humor or any of the resultant vir- i tues of healthy imagination.
 The futility of any attempt to con- trovert this perverted ideal is, of course, self-evident. Those who hold'it are absolutely deficient in the ability to understand any other conception of life than that so ably epitomized by Mir. Mantellini. Existence is a series of serious days seriously begun and seriously ended in the fear of God and especially of the devil. We are here to improve every shining moment not by the cultivation of any of the graces or charms with which we have been endowed but by turning the crank of moral perfection with rasping insist ence. pr. Hall is not the first man, nor will he be the last to stultify the true improvement" by spacious con ception of the meaning of the word. These improving" persons are com mon. They are to be met everywhere They are apt to live on predigested foods and invariably have theories as to the best mode of keeping body and soul together without 'pampering the appetite" They have religion which must be expressed at quarter of eleven o'clock orf' one day of the week and decently repressed at every other time. They, have much to say of morality and but little understand i ing of that generosity which demands the giving of ones self with ones aims. Charity, for the people of this type, is purely on basis of dollars and cents.
 1 Imagination playsa part in everything that is finest in nour' daily life. Without it the idealism which here and there acts as leaven in the sordld commer- cialism of American standards no more fatal mistake can be made in the edu- cation of the young than to deprive them of the inestimable privilege of entering the realm of phantasy. To say nothing of the cruelty to a human being of neglecting to cultivate in him the one faculty which may enable him to bear alike keen sorrow or temporary l ul5COiHIOTL, tlle IOltOWeFS or InP moral improvement" fad may be scored sole- ly on their own basis or argument
 If the term be used in its true signi- ficance, the need for such immoral books as Alice" or "The Water Babies" will be realized in making this improvement an absolute criterion, Does Dr. Hall fancy that the soul of a child is elevated only by stale ethi- cal axiOms? The Gradgrindian theo- ries have been disproved times without number and still, like those members of the Senate ironically typified by Circero, they raise their heads once more. Materialism is bad enough as the orbit in which mature persons re-
 Volve about little tin god of moral
 ity; when it is made the only path in which a child may walk the cruel in justice of the crime must arouse the disgust of all persons with any love for children or sincere desire for race
 rogress.-Providence Journal.