LITERARY NOTICES. 



559 



by the other half, there was with Mr. 

 Spencer no slightest question of its 

 truth, the evidence for it being to him 

 overwhelming and irresistible on every 

 hand. While a few scientific men were 

 giving to it a reserved adhesion, or test- 

 ing it in special directions, Mr. Spencer 

 was reconstructing the sciences by its 

 guidance, and building a philosophy out 

 of its principles. In any attempt to 

 appraise his intellectual rank, we are 

 bound to remember the originality and 

 the priority of the labors it is now so 

 easy to applaud. When it is a question 

 of grading the searcher after truth, it 

 makes a profound difference whether 

 he is a pioneer or a follower ; and it is 

 but naked justice to Mr. Spencer to 

 recognize that he had worked out the 

 grand doctrine of evolution in system- 

 atic completeness as now formulated 

 and accepted before Mr. Darwin had 

 published a word of his important con- 

 tributions to the subject. 



Clearly, then, the action taken by 

 the French Academy is discreditable to 

 its intelligence and to its impartiality. 

 By all the equities that should control 

 it in the discharge of its self-assumed 

 office of rating the intellectual services 

 of eminent men, the name of Herbert 

 Spencer ought long since to have been 

 enrolled among the first in honor. By 

 its culpable tardiness its belated verdict 

 is alike superfluous to the recipient and 

 to the world which long ago formed its 

 judgment of the rank of this philosophi- 

 cal thinker. And when at last the de- 

 cision comes, it betrays a misconcep- 

 tion of the case, which may be fitly 

 characterized as a blunder, while only 

 the following sorry apology can be of- 

 fered for it. It is well known that the 

 French are behind the world in their 

 appreciation of the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion. The French mind has never re- 

 covered from the warp it received half 

 a century ago in getting committed on 

 the wrong side by the overshadowing 

 genius of Cuvier, whose brilliant rhe- 

 torical triumph over Geoffroy Saint- 



Ililaire, in the walls of the Academy 

 itself, strongly biased the national 

 thought in relation to this subject. 

 The savants of France may therefore 

 be not very competent judges of the 

 foreign contributions to the knowledge 

 of it. But surely they should have 

 known better than to offer Herbert 

 Spencer the successorship to " Tappan, 

 of Detroit ! " In what way this gentle- 

 man ever got into the French Academy, 

 let those explain w T ho can ; but certain- 

 ly, if the place was suited to him, it is 

 not such as should have been proffered 

 as an honor to the most commanding 

 intellect of the age. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Notes op Talks on Teaching. Given by 

 Pkancis W. Parker, at the Martha's 

 Vineyard Summer Institute, July 17 to 

 August 19, 1882. Reported by Lelia 

 E. Patridge. New York : E. L. Kel- 

 logg & Co. 



The normal schools all over the land 

 have for the past twenty-five years been 

 sending out graduates whose mission it has 

 been to replace the old rote-system of les- 

 son-learning by methods better adapted to 

 the minds of children. We commend this 

 book to that great body of earnest teachers. 

 It contains a series of twenty-five full, clear, 

 and much-needed expositions of the princi- 

 ples that underlie primary and grammar 

 school teaching. The first half of the vol- 

 ume is devoted to lectures, or " talks," as 

 they are called, upon teaching children to 

 read, to spell, and to write. There are nine 

 further " talks " upon teaching composition, 

 numbers, arithmetic, geography, and histo- 

 ry. Then follow a chapter upon examina- 

 tions, another upon school government, and 

 another upon moral training. 



It is said, by some of our leading teach- 

 ers, that the noise about Colonel Parker 

 and the " Quincy System " is largely due to 

 the prominence of his trumpeters the Ad- 

 amses. And, no doubt, many willing learn- 

 ers will ask : " Is there really anything new 

 in Colonel Parker's teaching ? Have we 

 not, for a generation, been using identical 

 methods ? " We reply that this book cer- 



