PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 265* 



PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



VIII. TEACHER. 

 By HEEBERT SPENCER. 



TEACHING implies knowledge of things to be taught ; and as, 

 for various reasons, the priest comes to be distinguished by 

 his possession of knowledge, from him more especially is it to be 

 obtained. Moreover, being released from life-sustaining activities, 

 he has more time than others for giving information and enforcing 

 discipline. 



A deeper reason for this primitive identity of priest and teacher 

 may be recognized. Though during early years each youth gath- 

 ers, in miscellaneous ways, much which is properly to be called 

 knowledge, and which serves him for guidance in ordinary life, 

 yet there is a kind of knowledge, or supposed knowledge, particu- 

 larly precious, which does not come to him through the irregular 

 channels of daily experience. Equally in savage tribes and among 

 early civilized peoples, ghosts and gods are believed to be every- 

 where, and always influencing men's lives for good or evil ; and 

 hence of chief importance is information concerning the ways in 

 which conduct may be so regulated as to obtain their favors and 

 avoid their vengeance. Evidently the man who knows most about 

 these supernatural beings, the priest, is the man from whom this 

 information of highest value is to be obtained. It results that the 

 primitive conception of the teacher is the conception of one who 

 gives instruction in sacred matters. 



Of course the knowledge thus communicated is first of all com- 

 municated by the elder priests to the younger, or rather by the 

 actual priests to those who are to become priests. In many cases, 

 and for a long time, this is the sole teaching. Only in the course 

 of evolution along with the rise of a secular cultured class, does 

 the teacher as we now conceive him come into existence. 



Necessarily in early stages of all evolving aggregates the lines 

 of organization are indefinite. In groups of the uncivilized we 

 can not expect the function of educator to have become distinctly 

 marked off. Still we soon detect that inculcation of secret and 

 sacred things which, as above indicated, constitutes the earliest 

 kind of teaching : the " mystery men "' being the instructors. Says 

 Bernau concerning the Arawaks : 



" The son of a conjurer, as soon as he enters his twentieth year, or even 

 sooner, is made acquainted by his father with the art of conjuration, and 

 enjoined the greatest secrecy concerning it." 



And whether the neophyte be a descendant or not, there is always 

 this injunction of silence respecting the communicated informa- 



VOL. XLYni. 18* 



