IDEAS AND IDEALS

The Debating Union has finally decided for time and eternity that Mr. Mencken is worth reading, that he is a force, that he has a message. So one dare not read his editorial on education in the March "Mercury" with the usual grain of salt. Nor need one. For Mr. Mencken wandering through mazes of contradictions and losing himself in occasional thickets of wisecrackery does arrive at a definite and exact description of existing phenomena. He believes that there is not sufficient training in thought per se afforded by the usual American college education. And he is no doubt right. For the usual American education according to his connotation is not either adequate or honest. Men long versed in the knowledge that half truths are more profitable than whole truths teach the youth of the country to adopt the half truths and smile.

But Mr. Mencken goes little further. Like all capable iconoclasts he has no better icon in his pocket to replace the smashed idol. Bertrand Russell has. And though his particular idols are those of the philosophical mind and, therefore a triple shadowed by the clouds of unattainable idealism, they are worthy gods and not small ones.

Contemplating various systems of learning in the current Harper's, he forsakes them all as inadequate and turns to an appreciation of learning based on the development of four qualities in youth--vitality, courage, sensitiveness and intelligence--four characteristics which he believes are the necessary fundaments on which to build the best manhood. And he would cut all educational systems to fit those patterns. If education does not make for the vitality which predicates that pleasant existance which is devoid of envy. If it does not make for that courage which allows a man to understand his world, if it does not further a sensitiveness to the best in life--which often is the abstract--if the does not effect intellectual probity and curiosity then it has failed. And the world suffers from the unhappiness of ill health, poverty, and an unsatisfactory sex life, the greatest evils in Mr. Russell's opinion, and those which prevent progress and destroy delight.

But all this is in a high key. It does not strike the lower notes of the practical and precise definition of what such and education for such and such a boy must be. Yet ideals are, not unimportant factors even in modern life. And the educator by his calling is an idealist. To many Mr. Russell's icons have long been gods. To some they are new and quite strange. And it is to them that he addresses his words, even as his lesser contemporary addresses his more violent phrases. Perhaps all such addresses are futile. If they are the philosophy of pessimism can raise the Mercury to its must head and said blithely on if not--and one rather hopes this is true--then the Mercury is very interesting but progress continues.