The Reconstructed School eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about The Reconstructed School.

The Reconstructed School eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about The Reconstructed School.

Primarily, democracy is a spiritual impulse, the quintessence of the Golden Rule.  “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” and this spiritual quality inevitably precedes and conditions democracy in its outward manifestations.  Feeling, thinking, willing, doing—­these are the stages in the law of life.  The Golden Rule in action has its inception in the love of man for his fellow-man.  The action is but the visible fruitage of the invisible spiritual impulse.  The soldier in the trench, the sailor on the ship, the nurse in the hospital, the worker in the factory, and the official at his desk, all exemplify this principle.  The outward manifestations of the inward impulse, democracy, are many and varied, and the demands of the war greatly increased both the number and variety.  People essayed tasks that, a few years ago, would have seemed impossible; nor did they demean themselves in so doing.  The production and conservation of food has become a national enterprise that has enlisted the active cooeperation of men, women, and children of all classes, creeds, and conditions.  Rich and poor joined in the work of war gardens, thinking all the while not only of their own larders but quite as much of their friends across the sea.  And while they helped win the war, they were winning their own souls, for they were yielding obedience to a spiritual impulse and not a mere animal desire.  Thus Americans and the people of other lands, like children at school, are learning the lesson of democracy.  Moreover, they are now appalled at the wastage of former years and at the cheapness of many of the things that once held their interest.

In this process of achieving an access of democracy it holds true that “There is no impression without expression.”  Each reaction of the spirit tends to groove the impression into a habit, and this process has had a thousand exemplifications before our eyes since the opening of the war.  People who were only mildly inoculated with the democratic spirit at first became surcharged with this spirit because of their many reactions.  They have been obeying the behests of spiritual impulse, working in war gardens, eliminating luxuries, purchasing bonds, contributing to benevolent enterprises, until democracy is their ruling passion.  Every effort a man puts forth in the interest of humanity has a reflex influence upon his inner self and he experiences a spiritual expansion.  So it has come to pass that men and women are doing two, three, or ten times the amount of work they did in the past and doing it better.  Their aroused and enlarged spiritual impulses are the enginery that is driving their minds and bodies forward into virgin territory, into new and larger enterprises, and thus into a wider, deeper realization of their own capabilities.  So the leaven of democracy is working through difficulties of surpassing obduracy and resolving situations that seemed, in the past, to be beyond human achievement.  And of democracy it may be said, as of Dame Rumor of old, “She grows strong by motion and gains power by going.  Small at first through fear, she presently raises herself into the air, she walks upon the ground and lifts her head among the clouds.”  On the side of democracy, at any rate, it would seem that education is beginning to find its way again.

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Project Gutenberg
The Reconstructed School from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.