OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 627 



is man ? Evidently if we are to educate man upon scientific methods 

 we must know what man is ; we must know the laws of his being, the 

 relation of these laws to one another, and to the end for which man is 

 made. The science of education, therefore, presupposes a true psy- 

 chology, and a knowledge of the formation of character based upon 

 this psychology. In our country so-called educational treatises are 

 written by persons who have neither psychology nor minds to compre- 

 hend it ; and, while these works may have much valuable practical 

 matter, they should not be received as in any sense scientific. With 

 one exception (" Education/' by Herbert Spencer), the only works 

 which may claim to pretend to treat education scientifically are Ger- 

 man, and every one of these bases itself directly upon some psycho- 

 logical system. I need but name in illustration A. H. ISTiemeyer's 

 " Ground Principles of Education," Fred. Schwarz's " Instruction-Book 

 of Padagogik," as coming directly out of the Kantian thought, or Miss 

 Anna C. Brackett's translation of " The Philosophy of Education," by 

 Professor Rosenkranz, the biographer of Hegel, as an application of 

 Hegelian thought to education. We of to-day are feeling the influ- 

 ence of an entirely different philosophical system from either of those 

 above mentioned. Our educational methods are being remarkably and 

 rapidly modified. This change has received its psychological expres- 

 sion in England, and Mr. Spencer may be regarded as the representa- 

 tive thinker of this new school. Here the idea of man as to his nature 

 and the laws of his development is distinct and peculiar ; it gives us 

 an education based almost entirely upon instruction in the physical 

 sciences. 



Pending the attainment of a psychology that shall secure sufficient 

 general recognition to become the source of proper reform in our edu- 

 cational efforts, it would seem that nothing could be more profitable 

 than some consideration of the history of education. It is surely mat- 

 ter for regret that a subject so important as this should not long since 

 have been examined in the light of the idea of development. It is our 

 good fortune in most other matters to have abandoned a priori discus- 

 sion. Even with so deep a work as Goethe's " Faust " we feel that it 

 is necessary to proceed historically if we are to gain correct ideas as 

 to its origin and meaning. We have come to recognize this " Faust " 

 as the life-poem of one of the greatest of our race ; we have come 

 also to know that the material which Goethe transformed was deeply 

 rooted in our common humanity, and had already passed through a 

 natural and vigorous development long before the poet's day. How 

 much profundity of nonsense this historical feeling would have saved 

 us in literature and religion can not be estimated. Our debt to Comte 

 as the living source of modern historical feeling may well temper our 

 judgments before his later speculations. We have a right to expect 

 that whatever value there is in general historical study, as related to 

 the life and works of men, we should find in the history of education 



