4 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



late in bodily or mental training, but the trainer does not take upon 

 himself to lay down the rules of hygiene. 



The inadvertence, for so I regard it, of coupling the art of health 

 with education is easily disposed of, and does not land us in any 

 arduous controversies. Very different is another aspect of these defi- 

 nitions : that wherein the end of education is propounded as the pro- 

 motion of human happiness, human virtue, human perfection. Prob- 

 ably the qualification will at once be conceded, that education is but 

 one of the means, a single contributing agency, to the all-including 

 end. Nevertheless, the openings for difference of opinion as to what 

 constitutes happiness, virtue, or perfection, are very wide. Moreover, 

 the discussion has its proper place in ethics and in theology, and, if 

 brought into the field of education, should be received under protest. 



Before entering upon the consideration of this difficulty, the 

 greatest of all, I will advert to some of the other views of education 

 that seem to err on the side of taking in too much. Here, I may quote 

 from the younger Mill, who, like his father, and unlike the generality 

 of theorists, starts more scientifico with a definition. Education, 

 according to him, "includes whatever we do for ourselves, and what- 

 ever is done for us by others, for the express purpose of bringing us 

 nearer to the perfection of our nature ; in its largest acceptation, it 

 comprehends even the indirect effects produced on character and on 

 the human faculties by things of which the direct purposes are differ- 

 ent; by laws, by forms of government, by the industrial arts, by 

 modes of social life ; nay, even by physical facts not dependent on 

 the human will ; by climate, soil, and local position." He admits, 

 however, that this is a very wide view of the subject, and for his own 

 immediate purpose advances a narrower view, namely : "the culture 

 which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its suc- 

 cessors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and, if pos- 

 sible, for raising, the improvement which has been attained." ("In- 

 augural Address at St. Andrews," p. 4.) 



Besides involving the dispute as to what constitutes " perfection," 

 the first and larger statement is, I think, too wide for the most com- 

 prehensive philosophy of education. The influences exerted on the 

 human character by climate and geographical position, by arts, laws, 

 government, and modes of social life, constitute a very interesting 

 department of sociology, and have their place there and nowhere else. 

 What we do for ourselves, and what others do for us, to bring; us 

 nearer to the perfection of our nature, may be education in the pre- 

 cise sense of the word, and it may not. I do not see the propriety of 

 including under the subject the direct operation of rewards and pun- 

 ishments. No doubt we do something to educate ourselves, and soci- 

 ety does something to educate us, in a sufficiently proper acceptation 

 of the word ; but the ordinary influence of society, in the dispensing 

 of punishment and reward, is not the essential fact of education, as I 



