pastors, without their personal self-denial, their ceaseless appeal to their people, the triumphs of the Catholic faith in matters of religious education were never possible.

I name our brotherhoods and our sisterhoods. To them, in the name of Catholic education, I bow in reverence and gratitude. Sublime their life, in which we behold the magnificent flowering of the divine life imbedded in the deep fibre of the Church by Christ, her Founder. Nothing but a God-fashioned Church could have produced them, nothing but the supernatural grace of the Almighty could have nurtured the virtues that brighten their labors.

Our brotherhoods and our sisterhoods it is that permit our Catholic schools to exist. They are prodigal of service for the merest shade of pecuniary retribution. Without them the financial burden of Catholic schools were insupportable, without them Catholic schools should have long ago closed their doors. Our brotherhoods and our sisterhoods it is to whom we owe the high degree of efficiency which is the glory of our schools, which has victoriously overcome prejudices, whether among Catholics or among non-Catholics, that at one time seriously impeded their onward march.

I rejoice that the first extraordinary convocation gathered beneath the dome of the new Cathedral of St. Paul is that of the Catholic Educational Association of the United States of America. In greeting the Catholic Educational Association the Cathedral greets the sacred principle that religion is inseparable from the true education of childhood and of youth -a principle to which from altar and pulpit the Cathedral of St. Paul will ever consecrate its holiest inspirations, its most potent energies.

Delegates to the Convention of the Catholic Educational Association of the United States, I thank you for the honor

of your presence in the Cathedral of St. Paul; I thank you for the great cause you are championing; I invoke upon the deliberations of your several meetings the blessing of Him who once did say: "Suffer the little children and forbid them

not to come to me."

CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION

ADDRESS AT THE CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION

BY THE RT. REV. JOHN P. CARROLL, D.D.

BISHOP OF HELENA, MONT.

To the question, What good is the higher education? I answer by asking, What good is a healthy body? We all think a healthy body is a good thing, because we try to keep the body healthy and to restore its health when lost. We try to increase its health by food and drink, fresh air and exercise. We have a mind, too, certainly not inferior to the body, and we should strive to endow it with that perfection which corresponds to health in the body—that subtlety, that elasticity, that reach, that grasp, that enlargement and fulness, that vitality, that illumination which will enable it to exercise its functions with ease and grace. Now this perfection or state or habit of mind is obtained only by the higher or liberal education. Such education, therefore, is good for the mind itself, even if it serve no ulterior purpose, just as health is good for the body, even if it does nothing else. As health makes the body beautiful, so does liberal education make the mind beautiful, and the beautiful is the spice and the glory and the splendor of life. It exalts and ennobles and fills with joy the possessor and the beholder. Intellectual culture, then, or liberal education, is an end in itself. It is worth having for its own sake.

To the further questions, What good does a liberal education do? Of what use is it for man's life in the world? I could

answer by asking, Of what use is a healthy body? Just as you will tell me that a healthy body enables a man to do well all the things the body can do, so I tell you a liberally educated mind enables a man to do well all the things the mind can do. If you point out to me the wonderful mental accomplishments of men of little or no education, I can single out the marvellous physical feats of men of meagre bodily strength. And just as you will admit that these could do such things more easily, or could do things still more wonderful, if endowed with greater strength of body, so you must concede that with the added power of education those could accomplish, if not greater things, at least the ordinary things with greater delight and ease.

Yes, mind is power as body is power, but the liberally educated mind is the greatest natural power in the world. Compare it in the various activities of life with the mind which has received only the instruction that directly fits it for its work.

A multitude of witnesses will arise to tell you that the young man who enters the counting house at twenty-one with an education which had for its direct purpose merely to open, to invigorate, to strengthen the mind will, if diligent and devoted, outstrip in business capacity at the age of twenty-three a companion who from his sixteenth year has continuously occupied a similar position. I speak not here of those whose foolish pride would grasp the top of the ladder, disdaining the lower rounds. These must always fail. My statement applies only to those whose heart is in their work, whose spirit is that of those brave men "who while their companions slept were toiling upward in the night." Industry is an essential condition of success in any walk of life, but it is the intellect of the college graduate quickened by disciplinary studies and

formed to habits of method, of analysis, of comparison, that gives him a decided advantage in business over his companion of the mere business course.

A great European university after a trial of ten years declared that the graduates of the commercial schools are not on a par with the graduates of the classical schools in the pursuit of professional and philosophical studies, and that unless the plan of admitting both on an equal footing be changed, national scholarship would soon be a thing of the past. The reasons given were slower developments, superficial knowledge, lack of independent judgment, inferiority in private research, less dexterity, want of keenness, and defective power of expression. If the student of the practical and merely secondary education is not a match for his fellow of the college course during the time of their training for the professions, how can he compete with him, other things being equal, in the arena of practice?

We sometimes hear it said that labor does it all, that labor is the source of all production. Such a statement is made only by demagogues who would make political capital out of labor. Competent experts have calculated that seven-twelfths of the production of great industrial enterprises is due to ability and only five-twelfths to labor. It is the ability to organize, to foresee and forestall difficulties, to open up markets, to compete, to govern, to direct, to improve, to furnish occupation, to create opportunity which makes the largest contribution to the success of great industries. Whence that ability? Barring exceptional natural genius, it is the product of mind developed by education. The railroads and the mines will not admit even to their engineering shops as an apprentice the young man who has not received a collegiate or at least a highschool training. I hope the day is not far distant when all