To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

On the subject of the aims of education, I wish to submit two suggestions: (1) the spirit of education should be more materialistic; and (2) more political. I assure you there is nothing in my thesis that can shock the most high-minded New England transcendentalist. Affirmatively, I in fact present these intimations of direction for the educational process as sound instruments for achieving the aim propounded by your correspondent, Mr. Joslyn, namely, to ennoble the person educated.

I agree with Mr. Joslyn that the transfusion of the mere form and technique of knowledge cannot accomplish the desired result. It is the substance that we must look at; and the true substance is the basic or molding idea.

That the average college teacher is one of nature's noblemen we know. That the average Freshman is susceptible to the highest inspiration, is, though disputed, probably true. And money for books and laboratories and a matrix of student life is not lacking. Where, then, is the trouble (or the source of greatness, in so far as we may be satisfied with the result)? In the philosophy of life presented, I maintain that the basing of ideals, in history, economics, science, literature and personal attitude upon individual spirituality, is doubly vicious; because, at its utmost flowering, it manifests itself in mere personal amenities.

The reason for our overemphasis of such a philosophy in, let us say, America, is, I believe, an extreme and shocked reaction away from the opposite extreme of a purely materialistic interpretation of history which would rob us of God and a despotically socialist state which would deprive us of all freedom.

My thought is neither more nor less than a call to take a sensible middle course. Spiritual development of personality must depend on material opportunities; and therefore we should recognize, as a sine qua non for a progressive human being, a frank striving for money--and the time and things it can buy. And the goal of the terrestrial experiment seems to be the progress of the group as a group, even if for no other purpose than to shelter the specimens; and therefore the aim of life outside the ego should be, not service or sacrifice or any such personal vanity or object of backsliding, but a just acquiescence to that same striving in others which we have set up for ourselves. See how gloriously the German people fights (rightly or wrongly): possibly one reason is German compulsory workmen's insurance. See how miserably the buds of Russian civilization (more socialistic even than the German) are being crushed: possibly one reason is Russian mysticism. Here's to the golden American mean of the future, educating itself by recognition (1) that it is a society and (2) that there is no human life that is not economic. ISIDOR LAZARUS 2L.

P.S. To avert accusations of heresy or originality permit me to add that my source-book is a very conservative and churchmanly volume, to wit, the well-known Bible--which attributes to divine command "so crassly materialistic" our exercise of the state's police power as the institution of the Sabbath and "so brazenly political" a measure as the repropriation of citizen farmers every half century. And as to the separation of powers between Caesar and God, I have the authority of some eminent residents of Divinity Hall for no longer taking that injunction literally.