of tree planting and general arbor-day exercises. In addition to this, the eighth grade should start plants by means of cold-frames, hot-beds, or a small school-made greenhouse, and distribute them to the other children of the school to be used at home, or in order to distribute them in the school neighborhood.

In the main, school planting for the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades has been limited to decorative planting, even when the school may have an out-door garden. There are two reasons why this has been done: first, by limiting the planting in this way, emphasis is placed on the value of planting for decorative effect, and at a time when the children are beginning to participate in family plans and counsels; secondly, aside from leaving a large tract for the other children to cultivate, they will be influenced to join in the care and ownership of a community garden, or else be able to give more attention and time to a garden at home.

Eventually, when the decorative planting of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades exhausts the school possibilities, provision might be made for utilizing other available places in the school neighborhood and in the parks.

Finally, it is believed that the school and home window garden in large cities will most nearly insure an opportunity for all school children, first, to obtain experience and skill in growing flowers, vegetables, and "crop" plants, secondly, to assume increasing responsibility for the care of growing plants, and thirdly, to develop a conscious civic use for plants. JOHN WILKES Shepherd.

Department of Science,
Chicago Normal School.

International Influences-Philosophy

UDEA gave to the western world a religion; Greece gave

JUDE

it a philosophy; Rome, the impulse for organization and law. The Hebrew was a seer of the things unseen. Given to dreams and visions, endowed with rare spirituality not inconsistent with an appreciation of material values, he could not have, as did the Greeks, many gods. His highest ideal was the one Supreme God, whose eternal law was Justice and Righteousness. The Greeks with their passion for beauty found a divinity in every stream and rock, every fountain and dell. The Greek could worship at many shrines and feel at home in each. But while his religion was polytheistic he had within him that love of order, harmony, and proportion which implies unity and the principle of subordination; and while the Hebrew found the highest authority in Jehovah, and Rome saw no greater power than the state, Greece sought its ultimate in philosophy. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle bent their energies to find the one thing permanent in the changing world of phenomena, the one primal cause to which all other causes are due, the one power to which all other powers assent.

The Christian Church, which developed from Judaism, was dominant during the Middle Age. It availed itself of the Roman spirit for organization, and it availed itself of Greek philosophy, finding in the noble idealism of Plato a kinship with the thought of Jesus, and securing in the logic of Aristotle admirable weapons, both for offense and defense of its own particular tenets.

It was not until the Frenchman, Descartes, made the bold resolution of separating philosophy from dogmatic theology and of giving to philosophy a status of her own, that the modern world recognized philosophy's right to an independent existence. Descartes made it his business to find out what authority there was for truth, independent of dogmatic theology. He found it in his own consciousness. He

saw that he might doubt everything-the existence of God and the outward world of reality-but he could not doubt the activity of his own mind. Descartes left it for later philosophers to develop his basic principle, that thought, not things, is the ultimate; but he had given to philosophy a new impetus, and, best of all, an existence apart from theology.

That little country, the Netherlands, which opened its hospitable arms to the oppressed of all nations at the time our Pilgrim fathers needed a place of refuge, welcomed among others the Jewish parents of Benedict Spinoza. Little did Holland think that by so doing she would have the honor of giving to the world one of the ablest thinkers of all time.

Spinoza did not agree with Descartes that thought was ultimate; for to Spinoza neither mind nor matter was fundamental. To him the one and only reality was God. What Spinoza meant by God was as far removed as possible from the God of the theologians. God was to him the Eternal, the Absolute All-without whom there is nothing. Spinoza could not conceive God as loving, willing, thinking, creating for all these terms imply something outside of God, which is impossible since God is All.

To follow the influence of Spinoza's thought upon German and English philosophy would be an agreeable task, but there is not time for it in this or any one paper; but a hint of its character and influence can be given by quoting here and there from Goethe, whose thought is more easily understood. Heine once said, "Goethe is Spinoza set to poetry", and it cannot be denied that, in many respects, there was great sympathy of thought between the two. The well-known passage in Faust where Faust speaks to Marguerite of God as "the all-enfolding, the all-upholding" is in thorough accord with Spinoza's philosophy. Elsewhere Goethe referring to God or Nature says:

"Nor husk nor core in Nature see,-
The All-in-All at once is she."

For Goethe, no more than Spinoza, could separate God from Nature-although by Nature neither of them meant the vis

ible world alone. It was especially the pure tone of Spinoza's Ethics which most impressed Goethe. Goethe says,

"What I may have got out of the book by reading it, or what I may have read into it, I cannot tell. Enough that here I found rest, and saw a great free prospect over the world of sense and morals unrolled before me." What especially compelled Goethe's attention was the perfect unselfishness of Spinoza as seen on every page of the Ethics, and notably in that proposition where Spinoza says: "He who loves God must not require God to love him in return". German philosophers made free use of Spinoza's conception of the Absolute and dealt with it in philosophic form; while Goethe, Lessing, Herder, and others made it known to the laity through poetry, essays, and epigrammatic sayings.

Turning from Spinoza and going to England might seem to some like entering the land of the Philistines, so far as philosophy is concerned. It is a curious fact that while English poetry has reached exalted heights and fathomed depths most profound, English philosophy has kept its feet close on the ground, and has held to matter rather than mind as fundamental. Shakespeare, Browning, Tennyson have no equivalents among English philosophers. This does not mean that England has not been a force, and a powerful one, in philosophy. Had England done no more than she has in arousing and stimulating German thought she would have a splendid work to her credit; but there is much of direct and positive value in English philosophy which should not be underrated.

The trend of the English mind is in the direction of the so-called practical-that is to say, it prefers to deal with the visible, the tangible. To the Englishman the outer world is the world of reality. Not so with the German; the one reality of which he is sure is the world of thought. It is in harmony with the English character that its philosophy should lay stress on the world of matter-should affirm that we know nothing of mind except through matter; and it is in accord with German character to say, "We know nothing of matter except by and through mind". The English philosopher with his fondness for what he regards as a sure starting point says: "There is nothing in the intellect

which does not come through the senses"; to which the German with his bent for metaphysics replies; "Nothing except the intellect itself". The English tendency is to regard the mind as successive states of consciousness, linked together by some principle of association. The German affirms there must be something which is the subject of feeling,—an Ego, without which feeling would be impossible.

Both English and German philosophy developed a system of ethics corresponding to their philosophic thought. English ethics took on a utilitarian character. "The greatest good of the greatest number" was the idea of right, while the Germans developed a lofty system of ethics based on the subjective idea of duty, which Kant, the intellectual giant of Germany, emphasized as the supreme demand of the Pure Reason. The English idea of happiness did not count with the austere German. With him right and duty did not depend on cold calculation and could never be decided by votes. Fichte, who accented the moral ego of Kant, reveals at once the noble tone of German ethics when he said: "To be happy is not the purpose of our lives, but to deserve happiness". Of course the Englishman could make reply: "You Germans. are so afraid of temporizing with duty that you shut your eyes to the world about you and live in an unreal world of your own creation,-lofty, super-sublimated, and not adapted to every-day conditions"; and the German with equal force could answer; "Your ground of right changes with every change of circumstance. No man can do his full duty who is always casting sideglances at consequence."

Different as these two ethical systems were, both produced marvelously good results. In England the school of Mill and others representing utilitarian theories were energetic in bettering the conditions of humanity-bringing about reforms in economics, elevating the masses, urging suffrage for women-and in taking a larger outlook on the world generally. In Germany the literature of the time shows the inspiration that comes from high ideals and an exalted sense of duty, and this inspiration was not only felt in German literature but was transferred to England and America. Carlyle's robust thought, its imperative demand for justice, for righteousness at all costs, is charged with the spirit of