268 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



form in school, perhaps from the same 

 household, one will rise to honor and 

 another sink to dishonor; one will be- 

 come conspicuous in society, another 

 will never emerge from obscurity. But 

 what education icill do, if we work on 

 natural lines, if we are not too fussy 

 over it, and are careful not to give it 

 in too lai'ge doses, will be to liberate 

 and more or less wisely direct a vast 

 amount of intellectual power which at 

 present we confine and almost paralyze. 

 Good and sensible people are often 

 heard groaning over the vulgar and 

 frivolous enjoyments which alone seem 

 to afford any pleasure to the multitude ; 

 and there is some reason for the plaint, 

 though the multitude may not be so 

 much to blame as is supposed. It is a 

 question of intellectual energy. The 

 man or woman who has much of it to 

 spare will not be a frequenter of the 

 mere spectacular drama, nor a devourer 

 of coarsely sensational novels. What 

 excuse is sometimes given by our busy 

 men for their very inferior taste in lit- 

 erary, dramatic, and other matters? 

 Oh, that they are so fagged out by their 

 day's work that they want the stimulus 

 of something sensational. The excuse 

 is worked for all that it is worth ; but 

 in some cases there is something in it. 

 As regards a much larger number, how- 

 ever, both of men and of women, the 

 trouble probably is that their intellectual 

 faculties were not only not strength- 

 ened or invigorated by their early edu- 

 cation, but were more or less dwarfed 

 and numbed. If a youth were to go 

 through an alleged course of athletic 

 training and were to come away with 

 dwindled muscles and a more languid 

 condition of body tlian he had when he 

 began, we could at once, on the evi- 

 dence of our senses, pronounce the 

 whole thing a fraud. The mind, unfor- 

 tunately, docs not admit of the same 

 simple measurements as the muscles, 

 and we can not therefore so easily de- 

 tect the fraud when, after from five to 

 ten years of schooling, a young person 



steps out into the world with less of 

 intellectual apprehensiveness and less of 

 available mental vigor than he or she 

 had as a little child. Yet, that this has 

 been, and still is, a not infrequent re- 

 sult, who will deny ? 



There are great possibilities of good 

 in education if we will but recognize 

 our proper role in the matter, and not 

 try to usurp the place of the one con- 

 summate teacher Nature. There are 

 vast possibilities of evil in it if, plant- 

 ing ourselves on dogmas, traditions, and 

 classicisms, or attaching too absolute an 

 authority to our own generalizations, 

 we seek to dominate the minds whose 

 gradual evolution we should patiently 

 watch and cautiously and tenderly as- 

 sist. Most of us probably have more or 

 less teaching to do : let us remember 

 that, so far as this is the case, our art 

 is not that of the taxidermist or con- 

 structor of lay figures, but that we have 

 living tissue to deal with ; and let us 

 respect the mysteries of life and growth. 



IS ''SOCIETY'' VULGAR? 



Some weeks ago a prominent clergy- 

 man of this city was reported to have 

 expressed the opinion that the " society " 

 of to-day is vulgar. Reporters called 

 upon him to ascertain if he really had 

 S'lid anything so dreadful, and he was 

 obliged to confess that he had, and that 

 he really thought he had spoken the truth. 

 It is evident that whether he did speak 

 the truth or not depends on the sense we 

 attach to the word vulgar. If to be vul- 

 gar means to live plainly and without os- 

 tentation, then society is not vulgar, but 

 very much the opposite. If to be vulgar 

 means to take unconventional views of 

 things, and to estimate men and women 

 more according to their intellectual and 

 moral qualities than by the wealth they 

 possess and the figure they are able to 

 cut in the world of fashion, then to say 

 that society is vulgar is a cruel slander. 

 If to be vulgar is to be unversed in so- 

 cial forms, but sincere in friendship, 



