268 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



education " is hardly yet historical. Not 

 many "nations" have gone far into the 

 experiment; those wliich have done so 

 are recent, and the results by no means 

 confirm President Hayes's conclusion. 

 Prussia leads in popular education, and 

 that education is tributary, not to the 

 victories of peace, but to the victories 

 of war, the first fruit of which is a 

 grinding military despotism. The pop- 

 ular education of Germany, moreover, 

 exemplifies in a marked degree the an- 

 tagonism we have referred to, and is 

 wholly subordinated to military ends. 

 The following remarks of Professor 

 Dabney, in a late number of the 

 "Princeton Review," bear decisively 

 upon this point: "Eecent history is 

 more instructive, because it offers us 

 illustrious experiments of popular edu- 

 cation carried for two generations as far 

 as it is ever likely to be carried. Our 

 overweening hopes of good from mere 

 mental culture are much curtailed by 

 observing that the condition of Chris- 

 tendom was never more ominous and 

 feverish than it now is, after these ef- 

 forts at education. Military prepara- 

 tions were never so immense, or so 

 onerous to the national industry. The 

 spirit of war was once ascribed to the 

 ambition of kings, regardless of the 

 blood of their peace-loving subjects. 

 But we now see that, since the instruct- 

 ed peoples have acquired influence in 

 the governments of Europe, this fell pas- 

 sion is more rife than ever. It seems, 

 moreover, that the German nation, the 

 most educated one of all, is in as unsta- 

 ble a condition as the rest. The wild- 

 est political heresies prevail ; and these 

 rulers, the special and boasted exem- 

 plars of popular education, rely least on 

 popular intelligence, and most on the 

 sword, to save society from destruc- 

 tion. Intelligent men there dismiss the 

 idea with ridicule that any actual diffu- 

 sion of intelligence among the peasant- 

 ry, by the schools, is the real safeguard 

 of their universal suffrage. They tell 

 us that not one in three exercises his 



accomplishment of reading when an 

 adult a statement which the scanty 

 circulation of newspapers among them 

 confirms. They say that the primary 

 schools are useful chiefly as a drill in 

 obedience. They teach the child early 

 to submit to superiors, to move at the 

 sound of a bell, to endure tasks, to fear 

 penalties, to study punctuality, at the 

 command of others. Then comes the 

 conscription, and seven years' drill in 

 arms, to confirm the habit of submis- 

 sion. Thus the German system pro- 

 duces a peasant who is in the habit of 

 voting as the upper classes bid him, not 

 of thinking for himself! It is pre- 

 sumed that this picture of the virtues 

 of the system is not very flattering to 

 our Amei'ican hopes." 



BR. EDOUARD SEGVIN. 



In the death of Dr. Seguin, which 

 occurred October 28th, the commu- 

 nity has lost a man of genius and 

 also of peculiar and eminent usefulness. 

 Though a physician, and devoting him- 

 self to a specialty in his profession, the 

 results of his studies are of very broad 

 application, and are sure to be increas- 

 ingly appreciated in the future. 



Dr. Seguin was born at Clamecy, in 

 France, in 1812, studied medicine and 

 surgery in Paris, and early devoted him- 

 self to the investigation of nervous dis- 

 eases, and particularly to the nature 

 and treatment of idiocy. When he 

 took up the subject of the education 

 and training of the weak-minded, it had 

 been but very little explored ; there 

 was profound and widespread igno- 

 rance of all its principles, and it was 

 hedged about by inveterate prejudices 

 and superstitions. In the seventeenth 

 century St. Vincent de Paul gathered 

 a few idiots and labored assiduously for 

 years to instruct them, though with 

 very little success. In 1799 Jean Gas- 

 pard Itard, an eminent French surgeon 

 and a disciple of Condillac, grappled 

 with the problem in the case of the 



