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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dry den was not referring to the ad- 

 herents of any evolutionist philos- 

 ophy when he wrote: 



" In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell, 

 And injuries with injuries repel ; 

 Prompt to revenge, not daring to forgive, 

 Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe." 



" Not daring to forgive " is good, and 

 nearly as true in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury as it was in the seventeenth. 

 The one English statesman who 

 dared to forgive a defeat inflicted on 

 English arms and to acknowledge an 

 error, incurred by that single act a 

 deeper hatred and contempt than he 

 earned by anything else, or all else, 

 in his long and storm-tossed career. 

 We refer to the action taken by 

 Gladstone after the battle of Majuba 

 Hill. And we are much mistaken if 

 the majority of those who execrated 

 him most deeply for not crushing 

 the Boers under England's over- 

 whelming force were not immense 

 admirers of the cardinal's hymn. 

 What is certain is that they were 

 not immense admirers of Spencer, 

 and that Spencer did not immensely 

 admire them. 



Superintendent Smith has quoted 

 Emerson, but he does not occupy the 

 standpoint that enables him to see 

 Emerson in true perspective, or to 

 feel what his philosophy lacks when 

 confronted with the newer knowl- 

 edge of the century. Mr. J. J. 

 Chapman, in his recent memorable 

 book of essays, gives us a better view. 

 " A critic in the modern sense,'' Mr. 

 Chapman says, " he (Emerson) was 

 not. He lived too early and at too 

 great a distance from the forum of 

 European thought to absorb the ideas 

 of evolution, and give place to them 

 in his philosophy. . . . We miss in 

 Emerson the underlying conception 

 of growth, of development, so char- 

 acteristic of the thought of our own 

 day, and which, for instance, is found 

 everywhere latent in Browning's po- 

 etry. . . . He is probably the last 



great writer to look at life from a 

 stationary standpoint." 



That the doctrine of evolution 

 constitutes to-day a most important 

 guiding principle in education no 

 competent educationist could be 

 found to deny. It teaches us to deal 

 with the young as in a very true 

 sense the heirs of all the ages, to 

 make due allowance in childhood for 

 instincts and habits which partake 

 of the earlier stages of human devel- 

 opment, and to look forward with 

 confidence to later and higher mani- 

 festations. We have less faith than 

 our ancestors had in the rod, and 

 more in the gradual unfolding of the 

 powers and capacities of the mind, 

 and therewith the enlargement and 

 improvement of the moral nature. 

 We do not believe as our forefathers 

 did in breaking children's wills; nor 

 do we view their peccadilloes in the 

 lurid light of a gloomy theological 

 creed. We recognize that veracity, 

 in the sense of strict accuracy of 

 speech, purged of all imaginative 

 elements, is a virtue which not all 

 adults are able to practice, and which 

 is not a natural product of the child 

 mind. We can not accept Emerson's 

 doctrine of infant Messiahs, and yet 

 we can recognize very fully the mis- 

 sion of the child in the home, the 

 demand it makes for tenderness, for 

 patience, for though tfulness on the 

 part of parents, the hopes and fears 

 and heart-searchings that it calls into 

 play, the aspirations that it promotes 

 toward the realization, if for its sake 

 only, of a higher life. Froebel 

 grasped a large measure of truth in 

 regard to children, but too much of 

 sentiment, in our opinion, entered 

 into his treatment of them. In the 

 full light of the doctrine of evolution 

 we take them as they are, and help 

 them to work out under favorable 

 conditions that development of which 

 they are capable. We are not im- 

 posed upon by childish imitations of 



