We will first examine these two
fields and consider their value as constituent parts of the school
course.
_History_, in our present sense, includes what we usually understand by
it, as U. S. history, modern and ancient history, also biography,
tradition, fiction as expressing human life and the novel or romance,
and historical and literary masterpieces of all sorts, as the drama and
the epic poem, so far as they delineate man's experience and character.
In a still broader sense, history includes language as the expression
of men's thoughts and feelings. But this is the formal side of history
with which we are not at present concerned. History deals with men's
motives and actions as individuals or in society, with their
dispositions, habits, and institutions, and with the monuments and
literature they have left.
The relations of persons to each other in society give rise to morals.
How? The act of a person--as when a fireman rescues a child from a
burning building--shows a disposition in the actor. We praise or
condemn this disposition as the deed is good or bad. But each moral
judgment, rightly given, leaves us stronger. To appreciate and judge
fairly the life and acts of a woman like Mary Lyon, or of a man such as
Samuel Armstrong, is to awaken something of their spirit and moral
temper in ourselves.
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