EDITOR'S TABLE. 



703 



grade, to five very simple questions 

 forming an examination paper set for 

 candidates for admission to a free sten- 

 ographic class at the Cooper Institute. 

 These damsels were asked, among other 

 things, to state how many motions the 

 earth has, and how much time each oc- 

 cupies ; also what causes the change of 

 seasons. These things had been fully 

 explained to them, as was supposed, at 

 school ; and all, or nearly all, had in 

 point of fact retained some shreds of 

 the phraseology in which the expla- 

 nations had been conveyed. Here are 

 some examples of the answers to the 

 question as to the motions of the earth : 



" One motion. One year. The mo- 

 tion of sun round the earth." 



" Two motions. Night, Day, twelve 

 hours for each." 



"Four motions, it revolves on its 

 axis around once a year, and the four 

 motions cause the seasons spring, sum- 

 mer, fall, and winter." 



" The revolution of the earth on its 

 axis, and the inclination of 23J per cent 

 of its poles to the plane of its orbit." 



" Two motions, day and night. The 

 sun causes the earth to move around 

 its axis every twenty-four hours." 



" Two, Regular and Circular, twelve 

 hours for each." 



" If the earth would not be round, 

 the sun and moon could not go round 

 the earth. Sun takes twenty-four 

 hours. Moon takes twenty -four hours. 

 Stars at night." 



"We can not afford more space to this 

 rubbish. Suffice it to say that our con- 

 temporary prints the answers given to 

 the several questions by fifty-six of the 

 candidates, and that they all display the 

 most deplorable ignorance and confu- 

 sion. 



The problems of how science shall be 

 taught in the public schools, or indeed 

 whether it shall be brought into them at 

 all, depend for their solution upon having 

 the right kind of teachers. They need to 

 realize the utter ignorance of the child- 

 mind as it comes for instruction to the 



public school, and to understand how 

 to build up in that mind a fabric of real 

 and coherent knowledge. Let us turn 

 children out of the public schools igno- 

 rant, if need be, of many things that are 

 taught to them now ; but let this idea at 

 least be rooted in their minds, that this 

 world is made up of real things; and this 

 further idea, that words are worse than 

 useless unless they can be applied in the 

 most definite manner to well-understood 

 objects of sense or of thought. What a 

 blessing it would be if we could inspire 

 the rising generation with a real horror 

 of vague and meaningless language ! It 

 would mean nothing less than an in- 

 tellectual revolution in the world or at 

 least in our considerable pbrtion of it. 



THE RECOGNITION' OF TRUTH. 



If there should arise a class of men 

 who were able to distinguish, promptly 

 and invariably, genuine things from imi- 

 tations, facts from falsehoods, and truth 

 from error, they would have an almost 

 inconceivable advantage in the struggle 

 of life. The tricks of impostors would 

 never deceive them ; the bubbles of vis- 

 ionaries would never delude them ; they 

 would never be misled by the sophistries 

 of shallow theorists ; never be enslaved 

 by baseless superstitions. Such wisdom 

 is so unlike what the world has ever 

 known that the idea savors of Utopia 

 or the millennium, and to express it 

 seems almost childish. Yet it is a fact 

 that some progress toward this ideal has 

 been made some increase of the power 

 of recognizing truth has been gained. A 

 class of men has arisen whose pursuit of 

 health is not hampered by the delusion 

 that disease is a punishment for lapses 

 from religion, who do not waste their 

 money on schemes for getting more 

 power out of a machine than is put 

 into it, who do not accept every state- 

 ment that is put to them with rhetorical 

 vehemence and defective evidence. This 

 superior discernment far from perfect, 

 but the best that man has ever had 



