THE BATTALION.
9
perceive without the necessary physical force to perform
would find us but little better than the one-sided physically
developed Spartans. The supremacy of the spiritual and
moral natures of man must be recogmized in any adequate
system of education. The man who would belittle this
phase of man’s nature but proclaims his own littleness,
his lack of soul and brain.
Every phase of man’s nature must be harmoniously
developed in order that we may have the well-balanced,
symmetrical creature that God intended man to be.
What is the true end of man’s creation? Man never
recogmized the meaning- of his existence until he saw that
he was placed here as the sole intelligent observer of the
divine wisdom in the construction of this planet, and as
desig-nated to be God’s chosen companion with whom he
would hold daily intercourse. He was to be the discoverer
and interpreter of the divine mind in the structure and plan
of the-universe; he was to be the friend of God to whom
He would reveal the mystery of man’s own existence, his
moral destiny and the character of his divine Creator.
God was man’s best teacher, from whom he learned what
best satisfied his anxious inquiries, what helped his intel
lect to its profoundest meditations and stimulated it to its
larg-est activities. Oral instruction was ultimately sub
stituted by a text-book containing- the Divine Teacher's
communications, and man was henceforth bidden to study
that. He'was commanded to keep it in his heart, to teach
it dillig-ently to his children. We discover, therefore, that
he who formed the human mind, provided for its hig-hest
and best development. Had the study of natural laws suf-