If you have never been taught the way of Love at home, you cannot then select one individual to practise upon. You must begin early and practise on many. Thus, our young people are not taught how to love. Almost from the cradle, parents leave the training to outsiders. It is only because Love is so natural and spontaneous, that the victims get through at all. Witness how boys become pals. When Love ceases to be Love, it becomes hatred. "Hatred," writes Crabb, "is not contented with merely wishing ill to others, but derives its whole happiness from their misery or destruction." And so we often hear our young men say of the wives they walk out on: "I hope she gets what's coming to her."

Too many seek a predigested Love. And this is true not only of Love, but of every other "good and perfect gift," that the brother of our Lord refers to.

There has, doubtless, never been a time in any country, when so much real intelligence and so much moronic

stupidity dwelt side by side. Men in cloisters, of whom we seldom hear

if at all-spend years in writing books which nobody reads because this requires effort. We prefer best sellers and tabloids. The mental and spiritual labor involved in doing anything more than to keep up with the installments is too much for us. We do not see that true romance is not an affair of cosmetics but of the heart; it is not a matter of dishes left unwashed until the pantry shelves are empty and one has to do something about it. All these things and more, are not however, the cause of separations, divorces and cynical infant derelicts: they are only the results. We must go back to the sources; and the human consciousness must be corrected.

Count

One thing is certain: you must want to know how to love. The base coin which at present circulates under this name has no golden treasury in the common heart. Keyserling's matrimonial authorities agree that the prepared marriage is the most lasting. Married life must be more deeply rooted than friendship. Indeed, few friendships could stand it. Lovers are not only born, but made. Perhaps, after all, the secret of our weakness lies under the hand of her who no longer cares to rock the cradle-and how about father?

D

OWN in the less modernized Chelsea quarter of New York stands a long row of houses across whose dignified, old-fashioned façades runs a continuous key-design such as may be seen on Greek robes and in Greek architecture. In the floating dimness of a foggy afternoon one can visualize that long line of house-fronts as the Greek portico of a columned temple in whose shadow students might gather to listen to the exposition of some master and cross with him in discussion. A far leap of the fancy. These are only dwellings of modern, everyday New-Yorkers retaining, it is true, with their gnarled trees and discolored garden statuary, a touch of old-world stateliness. Yet, as one walks by the one walks by the grilled iron fences one sees near the door-post of one of these faded houses a modest sign bearing the inscription, "The New School for Social Research." Out of the long line of fancied Attic temples a school has been conjured. And its avowed object of "providing persons of mature intelligence with facilities for instruction and research in the vital problems of contemporary life" is worthy of the best of both ancient and modern times.

This object was based upon the recognition by the founders of the

New School, seven years ago, that there is a great and growing body of men and women engaged for the most part in the professions, business and industry, who feel the need of continuous and systematic study chiefly as a means of keeping mentally alert. Many of them, it was believed, might contribute materially, either through discussion or research, to the current of valid ideas on matters of contemporary concern. The province which the institution thus marked out for itself by observation, experiment and accomplishment, lies within the field which has since come to be known popularly as adult education. And in keeping with the best definition of that expression the New School aims, not merely to help its students to make up defects in early education and to attain given standards, but to organize their interest and abilities for continuous intellectual effort. Education becomes thereby a process, never completed, but continued through life if mental health and vigor are to be maintained.

Unhampered intellectually or academically, without social, political or religious bias, the New School is an educational laboratory to which the factory or the clerical worker is as welcome as the lawyer, the physician,

the teacher, the engineer and the social worker, if he but bring the one necessary contribution-intellectual interest. This institution fixes no entrance requirements, confers no degrees or credits toward degrees, and sets no examinations. As a result, the students come by the process of self-selection which draws minds of a high level of attainment. In proof of this statement out of nearly ten thousand students in the first seven years of the school twentyfive hundred held bachelor's degrees, seven hundred held master's degrees, two hundred doctor's degrees, two hundred and seventy professional degrees and seven hundred and thirty training-school degrees or certificates. The fact that these students are distributed over a range of employments including executives, doctors, lawyers, writers, editors, social workers, nurses, teachers, librarians, research workers, accountants, statisticians, engineers, draftsmen and ministers makes it necessary for the instructor to effect various adaptations in his method. He cannot make the familiar academic assumption that every student has covered a specific preliminary course; nor can he assume the merely fugitive interest on which the popular lecturer must draw. The most successful technic is worked out on the plan of inter-communication between the subject matter of the lecturer and the experience of the students.

That this different approach to education is intriguing to lecturers and professors of high scholarly standards is shown by the fact that the New School attracts to its faculty celebrated authorities from this country and abroad, such as John Dewey,

Graham Wallis, James Harvey Robinson, John Masefield, John B. Watson, Harold Laski, Sandor Ferenczi, Morris Cohen, Edwin G. Conklin, Julian Huxley, Bernard Gleuck, Frankwood Williams, Franz Boas, Alfred Adler and Stark Young. The magnet which draws them more powerfully than any other force is no doubt the atmosphere created by the students they face in the lectureroom-persons who come in increasing numbers every year to the New School because they find there, as they did not or do not in the same measure find at college, the sense of an on-going changing world, a fearlessness of inquiry, an appraisal of ideas and a fine spirit of comradeship in the great adult adventure of becoming intelligent about life.

22

The present plan of the New School-"a coöperative venture in non-authoritarian, informal learning, the chief purpose of which is to discover the meaning of experience”— did not spring full panoplied into being. On the contrary it is the outcome of seven years of changes, experiments and growth. In the period immediately following the war the idea in the top of everybody's mind was economic reconstruction in the interest of the masses. flict had impressed thinkers with the immense waste of effort that goes on. The fact that one could take 4,000,000 men out of industry, supply them with munitions and equipment and yet carry on our economic system almost as before, was a scathing commentary on the enormous leakages in our scheme of living. James Harvey Robinson, Charles A. Beard and Thorstein Veblin—the academic

The con

nucleus among the moving spirits of the New School in its beginningshad each a definite conception of social reform. Their idea was to make a contribution through research directed toward reconstruction. By getting people together, studying their minds and trying them out in one way and another, at least the experiment would have made a beginning. Beard, Graham Wallis and Robinson-whose book "Mind in the Making" was composed of his lectures given at the New School-were the lecturers the first year, besides which three fellows were engaged exclusively in research.

But the pattern, although set so carefully, did not fulfil the beautiful beginnings of its design. In a year or two the general interest in economic reconstruction died out. Funds fell away, crippling the research function of the New School. The teaching program on the other hand could continue. Only it became obvious to Dr. Alvin Johnson, the present director, and others interested in the experiment, that the students did not want exclusively to take courses in political science and economics. What they particularly desired was psychology. For more than a decade through the thought of America a stream of psychological thinking had been flowing, much of it, to be sure, poor and amateurish. Yet just as wild animals come hundreds of miles for a taste of salt, so the individual turns instinctively to the study of psychology. The animal does not know, when he seeks the salt stone, that iodine is good for his thyroid gland. Similarly, without always being aware of the reason,

modern people have a leaning toward the study of psychology. They only know that possibly it can tell them what is the matter with their thinking, why life has ceased to be the high adventure it once was, why such a gap yawns between them and the younger generation, why Richard, a doctor's son, would rather be an elevator boy than follow his father's profession.

Sensing the growing trend of thought, seeing people eager to come to the New School and hearing their demand for a study of psychology in addition to other things, Dr. Johnson and his associates reasoned thus: Here is a body of adult people dissatisfied with their lives. It is not enough to find out what is the matter with their spiritual and mental diet. -All the herds between two mountain systems are suffering from a lack of iodine. It remains for us to supply them with a new diet. Thus almost overnight the New School became an adult educational institution committed to discover the needs of a rather silent body of people, a body in which the college graduate is the most dominant element though not perhaps the most numerous one. In shaping the curriculum, for the convenience of workers, classes come in the late afternoon and evening; 5:20 to 6:50 and 8:20 to 9:50—it was decided that every course given, be it in anthropology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, mathematics or the arts, must have a content worth while for the person at the college graduate stage of culture. People without college degrees were welcome to enter the New School. If they could keep up, well and good. As a matter of fact, there was found

between persons who have enlightenment through university training and those who have gained it by means of experience, association and thinking. A noteworthy example of this was the case of an elderly Russian Jew who, on coming to this country, had employed all his time in making enough money to support his family and send his sons to college. When they became mature he found himself in the unenviable position of being no longer the head of his family. Their sense of intellectual superiority had shouldered him out of his place. In his unhappiness he enrolled as a student at the New School. Here for several years he devoted himself to the study of history, philosophy and the arts. In the end he found himself reinstated as the patriarch of his tribe.

But for the most part the New School has sought to supply, as far as its means permit, facilities for studying the subjects most vital to persons already possessing a liberal education. It does not strive to bring its students to a specific academic standard; but it takes its steps squarely on the basis that intellectual exercise is a permanent need, that for mental health systematic study is just as necessary as is physical exercise for the health of the body. And it has the conviction that unless there is a continuity of mental stimulation in the lives of middle-aged people engaged in practical affairs, no intellectual sympathy can exist between them and the younger generation passing through the colleges and the universities.

Walt Whitman has caught that ideal companionship in his lines:

that I sought to destroy in

stitutions,

But really I am neither for nor against institutions,

(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)

Only I will establish in the Manhatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard,

and in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,

The institution of the dear love of comrades."

22

The sublimated color which comes from exchange of ideas and a quiet stirring mental life are the characteristics which strike you when you first visit the New School. Half unconsciously you are aware of the simplicity of the place. The building consists of offices, rooms in which to seat classes, a library, a book-shop, an auditorium, a lounge, a diningroom, and you soon learn that the administrative staff is as small as is compatible with effective work. But the unpretentiousness of furnishing has no effect of meagerness because of the abounding intellectual activity and the spontaneity with which each interest is invested. Everywhere you feel the zest in the adventure. In the compact book-shop where the tall young woman in charge tells you of the amazement of publishers that more books on serious subjects are best sellers here than in any but two other shops in New York; and then breaks off to say, "But it's because the students of the New School have