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Education, like most things except high-class cookery, must be judged by ultimate results; and though it may not be possible to pass any verdict on current educational methods (especially when you do not happen to have even seen them in action), one can to a certain extent assess the values of past education by reference to the demeanor of adults who have been through it.  One of the chief aims of education should be to stimulate the great virtue of curiosity.  The worst detractors of the American race—­and there are some severe ones in New York, London, and Paris!—­will not be able to deny that an unusually active curiosity is a marked characteristic of the race.  Only they twist that very characteristic into an excuse for still further detraction.  They will, for example, point to the “hordes” (a word which they regard as indispensable in this connection) of American tourists who insist on seeing everything of historic or artistic interest that is visible in Europe.  The plausible argument is that the mass of such tourists are inferior in intellect and taste to the general level of Europeans who display curiosity about history or art.  Which is probably true.  But it ought to be remembered by us Europeans (and in sackcloth!) that the mass of us with money to spend on pleasure are utterly indifferent to history and art.  The European dilettante goes to the Uffizi and sees a shopkeeper from Milwaukee gazing ignorantly at a masterpiece, and says:  “How inferior this shopkeeper from Milwaukee is to me!  The American is an inartistic race!” But what about the shopkeeper from Huddersfield or Amiens?  The shopkeeper from Huddersfield or Amiens will be flirting about on some entirely banal beach—­Scarborough or Trouville—­and for all he knows or cares Leonardo da Vinci might have been a cabman; and yet the loveliest things in the world are, relatively speaking, at his door!  When the European shopkeeper gets as far as Lucerne in August, he thinks that a journey of twenty-four hours entitles him to rank a little lower than Columbus.  It was an enormous feat for him to reach Lucerne, and he must have credit for it, though his interest in art is in no wise thereby demonstrated.  One has to admit that he now goes to Lucerne in hordes.  Praise be to him!  But I imagine that the American horde “hustling for culture” in no matter what historic center will compare pretty favorably with the European horde in such spots as Lucerne.

All general curiosity is, to my mind, righteousness, and I so count it to the American.  Not that I think that American curiosity is always the highest form of curiosity, or that it is not limited.  With its apparent omnivorousness it is often superficial and too easily satisfied—­particularly by mere words.  Very seldom is it profound.  It is apt to browse agreeably on externals.  The American, like Anglo-Saxons generally, rarely shows a passionate and yet honest curiosity about himself