Plato wrote above the door of the academy, “Let no one enter here who is destitute of geometry.” Why did he value geometry so highly? Not merely as an introduction to the study of philosophy, for in one of his dialogues he says, “God geometrizes.” He had an idea that a youth in thinking the theorems of geometry is thinking divine thoughts. When Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, he exclaimed, in ecstasy, “O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” When a pupil learns to think the thoughts which the Creator has put into the starry heavens above us and into all nature about us, he is thinking God’s thoughts and tasting the enjoyments of the higher life. When he is taught the right use of books, and given access to a public library, he may acquire the power to think the best thoughts of the best men at their best moments. In nature study, in the reading lesson, in the teaching of science and literature, the school fosters the higher life of the pupil by enabling him to think God’s thoughts and man’s best thoughts as these are enshrined in creation and in the humanities. The objection is sometimes heard that the school makes the working-classes discontented with their lot. “Teach a man to think,” says the opponent of universal education, “and you make him dissatisfied with what he has and knows.” If the school fixes the eye upon wealth, fame, glory, official position, and other things which can be attained only by a few, and which, when sought as the chief end of life, resemble the apples of the Dead Sea, turning to ashes on the lips as soon as they are tasted, then, indeed, the school may doom its pupils to a life of discontent and disappointment. But if the school fixes the eye upon the things of the higher life, things which are within the reach of every boy and girl at school, it lays the foundation for a contentment far transcending the possibilities of a life that turns upon feasting, office-holding, and the things that can be bought with money.
It must be admitted that the exercise of the higher powers carries with it a certain feeling of discontent, but it is a feeling that conditions true progress and is not doomed to ultimate disappointment. The true test of what is preferable is the testimony of those who have knowledge of both modes of existence. Who that knows both does not value the pleasures of thinking above those of eating? Who would exchange the joy of doing right for anything attainable by the man who, for the sake of success, banishes ethics from his business or his politics? “Few human creatures,” says Mill, “would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.” “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is only because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” Who would not rather be an intelligent workingman seeking to better his condition, than an ignoramus contented with little because he knows nothing of the joys of the higher life?