EDITOR'S TABLE. 



267 



may be perfect as a human being. 

 A man or woman who has been 

 truly educated according to this 

 ideal is not dependent for bis or her 

 enjoyment of life on coarse pleas- 

 ures or childish excitements. There 

 are sources of happiness in the awak- 

 ened intellectual and moral powers 

 and the well-trained physical organ- 

 ism that are not exhausted even 

 with advancing years. The ques- 

 tion which educationists have to 

 consider is whether it is not possi- 

 ble, without sacrificing in any degree 

 whatever the just claims of practical 

 life, still to uphold and make mani- 

 fest that higher conception of edu- 

 cation which existed in past times, 

 and which is still cherished wherever 

 liberal views of life prevail. If arith- 

 metic, geography, grammar, the sci- 

 ences, and languages are consciously 

 used with a view to intellectual and 

 moral results, that surely will not 

 interfere with a subsequent " practi- 

 cal " use of the knowledge gained by 

 the pursuit of those studies. If we 

 are not mistaken, we see indications 

 of a growing feeling that education 

 in the higher sense to which we re- 

 fer is not democratic. That is a point 

 on which we are not prepared to pro- 

 nounce an opinion; but certainly the 

 education we should desire for any 

 one in whom we felt an interest 

 would not be one which left his 

 whole higher nature out of the ac- 

 count. 



PARENTAL NEGLECT AS A CAUSE OF 

 HOODLUMISM. 



It may be doubted if ever in the 

 history of this country complaints of 

 lawlessness, particularly of that kind 

 known as hoodlumism, were so bitter 

 and so universal. The evil is not 

 confined to the South, where the 

 ravages of the civil war left a deep 

 mark of demoralization, nor to the far 

 West, where the rudeness of frontier 

 life is no stimulant to virtue. Even in 



the East, in New England, the home 

 of Puritan order and virtue suffers 

 from it. So serious and widespread 

 has it become in towns still inhabited 

 by the descendants of the stern men 

 and women that fled from the vice 

 and intolerance of the civil and ec- 

 clesiastical rulers of England that 

 Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, at the 

 dinner given to fellow-professors at 

 Ash field, Mass., a few weeks ago, was 

 moved to sound the alarm, taking as 

 his text the shocking murder of a 

 woman at Shelburne Falls by a vil- 

 lage ruffian of New England birth. 



The address, startling but not sen- 

 sational, has evoked very general 

 discussion. It has stimulated the 

 production of theories to account for 

 this flood of lawlessness. One is the 

 absence of proper police surveillance 

 to restrain the disorderly instincts of 

 the ruffian. Another is the absence 

 of the civic virtue that compels peo- 

 ple to take part in public affairs, and 

 to see to it that life and property are 

 protected. While both are doubtless 

 worthy of consideration, neither of 

 them goes to the root of the matter. 

 We are still in the dark as to the 

 reason of the absence of civic virtue 

 and the presence of criminal instincts. 

 Why, after all our elaborate legisla- 

 tive efforts to make people walk in 

 the straight and narrow path, and 

 to provide them with all the educa- 

 tional advantages that money can 

 buy, is it true, in the bitter words of 

 Alphonse Karr, that "plus get change, 

 plus e'est la meme chose " ? In other 

 words, why have all our efforts to 

 promote civilization resulted only in 

 the revival of barbarism ? 



We believe that the chief of the 

 Massachusetts police has hit upon 

 one of the most potent causes of this 

 deplorable state of affairs. " The 

 root of the trouble," he said, when 

 asked his opinion of Professor Nor- 

 ton's address, " lies in the fact that so 

 many parents are lax in bringing up 



