CAUSE AND EFFECT IN EDUCATION. 55 



And yet this very obvious thing has not been done. One can 

 not honestly say that the education of to-day rests upon a scien- 

 tific basis. It seems to us absurd now that Kepler should have 

 referred the planetary motions to an indwelling will. But we are 

 doing things even more absurd in the name of education. We 

 observe tendencies in children: we refer them to false causes. 

 We desire a certain development : we set in motion the wrong 

 machinery. In a word, as scientists we are causationists ; as edu- 

 cators we are not. 



Now, what is to be done about it ? Modern educators are for 

 the most part sincere, enthusiastic, devoted. Even to those who 

 teach simply for the salary, there must come occasionally an 

 altruistic thrill. Why then do we fail so dismally ? Why are we 

 all so blind ? 



It is easier to ask questions than to answer them ; to de- 

 clare one's self a sinner than to become a saint. But the world 

 is old. It has met many sorrows. We ought from these to 

 be able to learn some lessons. We ought to be able to reach 

 some fertile thought capable of transforming education into a 

 science. 



Few problems have had greater play of thought about them 

 than this very problem of education, and it has been thought of a 

 high character. The various lines which this thought has taken 

 are to be found in the histories of education. It is noticeable in 

 glancing over this curious history that all lines converge in this 

 one point, that each system of education which they represent is 

 the somewhat retarded reflection of the Zeitgeist the belated 

 product of the great time-spirit of the age in which they hap- 

 pened to be born. Resting, as education does, upon all the 

 other sciences, it is inevitable that its fruition should follow 

 theirs. With religion and ethics and sociology and biology in a 

 state of incoherence and empiricism, it was manifestly impossible 

 for education to be rational. It was first necessary that the 

 foundation sciences should be reduced to order, and the sequence 

 of cause and efl^ect established within their own borders. This has 

 been done in part. It is the peculiar glory of these closing years 

 of the nineteenth century that they have witnessed a unification 

 of knowledge such as previous ages had not the power even to 

 dream of. These many sciences upon which education rests have 

 been shown to be but so many manifestations of one science, and 

 the phenomena which they study but the operations of one law. 

 And this law expresses the orderly sequence of the universe, the 

 inviolable following of cause and effect, the exclusion of exterior, 

 unmeasurable agencies, the uniform unfolding of the present out 

 of the past in a word, it is the great law of evolution. The sys- 

 tem of education which is the proper flower and fruit of this 



