554 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



r MUx T & gafcle. 



EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLU- 

 TION. 



AN ingenious but somewhat para- 

 -£A- doxical writer of the present 

 day has lately said that, " were we all 

 agreed as to the training of our chil- 

 dren, we need not await the slow 

 evolution of the social millennium ; 

 it would be achievable in the very 

 next generation." His argument is 

 that "if a generation can be reared 

 to reverence a stick or a stone, an in- 

 animate idol, and this or that gro- 

 tesque religious system, it can be 

 reared also to love and reverence 

 man." The postulate here, it will be 

 observed, is a very extensive one— 

 " were we all agreed as to the train 

 ing of our children." The meaning 

 evidently is, that if our intellectual 

 methods and moral principles were 

 in complete accord, and if both were 

 of the most advanced order, we might 

 look for the speedy coming of the 

 millennium. Why not? We should 

 be all but in it ourselves, and when 

 it came our children would hardly 

 know the difference. 



It does not seem to us that there 

 is much advantage in this way of 

 stating the case. We are not all 

 agreed as to the training of our chil- 

 dren. We are agreed, broadly speak- 

 ing, in some things; but, unfortu- 

 nately, the things we are agreed 

 upon do not make very directly for 

 the millennium. In the matter of 

 education there is no opinion so 

 widely shared or so strongly held as 

 that education ought to be mainly a 

 preparation for commercial success. 

 It was said long ago that wisdom was 

 " the principal thing," and that there- 

 fore we should get wisdom. That 

 opinion has been before the world 

 for some thousands of years, but it 



has never yet dominated the mind of 

 any society ; and to-day, as much per- 

 haps as ever, the feeling of the mul- 

 titude is that money is the principal 

 thing, and that therefore every effort 

 should be bent on getting money. 

 Apart from the teaching of school 

 there is the teaching of daily life. 

 Here again the most widely enter- 

 tained ideals are not the best. The 

 methods, for example, of the politi- 

 cian may almost be said to be im- 

 posed on him by the people. If the 

 path to political success lay through 

 a careful study of public questions 

 with a view to the general good, our 

 politics would be completely trans- 

 formed and a new race of men would 

 appear upon the scene. But the idea 

 of the general good as a paramount 

 object is one which, in the present 

 state of our civilization, can not be 

 brought home to many minds; and 

 the fact that it is repudiated by the 

 multitude renders it difficult for those 

 who acknowledge and accept it to act 

 on it in a consistent manner. 



The writer we have quoted, Mr. 

 Archdall Eeid,* thinks that, because 

 a generation can be educated to wor- 

 ship a stick or a stone, one might 

 just as easily be educated to "love 

 and reverence man." Well, as we 

 have already suggested, if the preced- 

 ing generation loved and reverenced 

 man, its successor would probably do 

 so also, and possibly in a slightly in- 

 creased degree. But that is not to the 

 purpose; the question is, whether the 

 present generation, being what it is, 

 could as easily train the next into all 

 the virtues required for the millen- 

 nium as a given tribe of savages 

 might train its children to believe in 



* See his article, Characters, Congenital and 

 Acquired, in Science, December 24, 1807. 



