EDITOR'S TABLE. 



12 3 



people, who know neither antiquity, 

 nor the sciences, nor languages, nor 

 even orthography, are nevertheless 

 very worth y folk ; while inversely we 

 find that all their instruction has not 

 preserved a number of unfortunates 

 from the worst lapses; and neither 

 certificates nor diplomas have pre- 

 vented them from succumbing to 

 the most vulgar temptations." As 

 applied to this country the writer's 

 language is a little lacking in exact- 

 ness; for here the conditions are 

 such that it is difficult, for native- 

 born citizens at least, to remain igno- 

 rant of the arts of reading and writ- 

 ing except through fault of their 

 own ; but it certainly has been the 

 case in the past everywhere that 

 people could be, as he says, '\fort 

 honnetes gens'''' without any tinc- 

 ture of what we now call education. 

 Their knowledge was confined to 

 some useful art by which they earned 

 a living, and the precepts of common 

 morality. 



The question M. Brunetiere next 

 discusses is how "to put some soul 

 back into the school," or, in his own 

 words, " rendre une dme a Vecole " ; 

 but his observations on this point, 

 referring as they do to a system of 

 education controlled by the national 

 Government, have but a slight ap- 

 plication to this country. It is here, 

 however, that we find ourselves dis- 

 agreeing with some of his incidental 

 remarks. He accuses men of science 

 of being excessively dogmatic in their 

 opinions, and apparently ignoring 

 the modern conception of the rela- 

 tivity of knowledge. Now, some men 

 of science may be dogmatic, but to say, 

 as the learned editor does, that a most 

 of these will not allow their con- 

 clusions to be disputed, or so much 

 as criticised," is to fall into great ex- 

 aggeration. As to the doctrine of 

 the relativity of knowledge, it is a 

 doctrine which science has estab- 

 lished. It is earnestly and constant- 



ly insisted on by Auguste Comte, 

 and has been illustrated and elabo- 

 rated in great detail by Herbert 

 Spencer. It is not, however, a doc- 

 trine of which much use can be 

 made in imparting scientific or any 

 other knowledge to the young, whose 

 natural philosophic creed is one of 

 simple confidence in the reality of 

 phenomena. M. Brunetiere is fur- 

 ther of opinion that science should 

 only be given in very small and judi- 

 cious doses in primary and second- 

 ary schools. The important thing, in 

 our opinion, is, that nothing should 

 be done to check the spontaneous 

 activity of youthful minds, or any 

 flow of emotion which may be asso- 

 ciated therewith. Science should, 

 therefore, not be imparted to the 

 young in too didactic or formal a 

 manner; it should rather come to 

 them in the form of a constant ap- 

 peal to investigate, to use their own 

 faculties of sight, touch, hearing, 

 smell, and to draw their own infer- 

 ences from data thus collected. We 

 quite believe that, in the hands of 

 an inexperienced and unsympathetic 

 teacher, science lessons might be 

 given to youthful students in such a 

 way as simply to check imagination 

 and inspire distrust in the testimony 

 of the senses; but when the right 

 kind of science teaching can be got, 

 there will be no need to deal it out 

 as the dangerous drug which the ed- 

 itor of the Revue des Deux Mondes 

 seems to consider it. 



Returning to the question on 

 which, as we have stated, this writer 

 does not give us much help how to 

 get " soul " into the schools we must 

 observe that any success in such an 

 effort will depend largely on public 

 opinion. The great mischief of an 

 imperfect educational system is that 

 it creates the public opinion by which 

 itself is judged. The man of thirty- 

 five, who to-day has children of his 

 own at school, was a scholar himself 



