When the boy overhears a companion put a slight upon the good name of his
mother, he does not deliberate but, like a flash, smites the mouth that
defames. He may deliberate afterward, for the mind then has a fact upon
which to work, but if he is a worthy son it is not till afterwards.
Spiritual impulses are as quick as powder and as direct as a shaft of
light. So quick are they that we are prone to disregard them in our
contemplation of their results. We see the boy strike and conclude, in a
superficial way, that his hand initiated the action, nor take pains to
trace this action back to the primal cause in the spiritual impulse. True,
both mind and body are called into action, but only as auxiliaries to
carry out the behests of the spirit. When the man utters an exclamation of
delight at sight of his country's flag in a foreign port, the sound that
we hear is but the conclusion or completion of the series of happenings.
It is not the initial happening at all. On the instant when his eyes
caught sight of the flag something took place inside the man's nature.
This spiritual explosion was telegraphed to the mind, the mind, in turn,
issued a command to the body, and the sound that was noted was the final
result. In a general way, education is the process of training mind and
body to obey and execute right commands of the spirit. This definition
will justify our characterization of education as a spiritual process.

Seeing, then, that the body is but a helper whose function is to execute
the mandates of the spirit, and seeing, too, that education is a process
of the spirit, it follows that our concern must be primarily and always
with the spirit as major. It is the spirit that reacts, not the mind or
the body, and education is, therefore, the process of inducing right
reactions of the spirit. The nature of these reactions depends upon the
quality of the external stimuli. If we provide the right sort of stimuli
the reactions will be right. If, today, the spirit reacts to a beautiful
picture, tomorrow, to the tree in bloom, the next day to an alluring