702 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whom science teaches nothing; they 

 reap its material advantages, hut repu- 

 diate all its higher lessons. Practically 

 they hold to the unalterable uniformi- 

 ties of nature. They ply the arts of in- 

 dustry, telegraph around the world, trust 

 their lives on the flying train, and in a 

 thousand exposures, practically certain 

 that there will never be a hair's breadth 

 of failure in the adamantine order of 

 natural laws; and then they formulate 

 a belief in ghosts who can kick holes 

 through the rotten contexture of nature 

 anywhere ! Such beliefs are pernicious, 

 not only because they are intrinsically 

 false and absurd, but because they are 

 in vicious hostility to science, and are 

 a fatal obstruction to the advance of 

 rational education. That science, as the 

 most perfect form of knowledge, and 

 therefore the true basis of education, 

 has never had even decent considera- 

 tion in the New York schools, is suffi- 

 ciently well known ; nor is the explana- 

 tion far to seek, when their head turns 

 out to be a spiritualist, and opens his 

 book of revelations by the virtual an- 

 nouncement that he is miraculously 

 called of God *to arrest the course of 

 modern scientific thought! If it be said 

 that this is only the private eccentricity 

 of a single person, the reply is, that we 

 have yet to learn that it is not repre- 

 sentative of the power that controls 

 education in this city. The President 

 of the Board of Education is reported 

 to have said, when interviewed with ref- 

 erence to the removal of the Superin- 

 tendent, " The strong feeling against him 

 in the minds of the Commissioners who 

 are opposed to Mr. Kiddle, arises not so 

 much from any desire to interfere with 

 his private opinions about spiritualism, 

 as practically to show their disapproba- 

 tion of the vapid trash to which he lends 

 his sanction as communications from the 

 spirits of the departed.'" From which 

 we are to infer that, if the aforesaid 

 " communications from the spirits of 

 the departed " had been a little less 

 vapid or trashy in their form, the board 



of officers who have in charge the for- 

 mation of the minds of the young in 

 this metropolis would have no objection 

 to them. Our objection is not merely 

 or mainly to the worthless character 

 of Mr. Kiddle's book, but that it is an 

 official insult to science ; and we say 

 that the mind which could dally with 

 such vagaries is not fit to guide and 

 shape the education of the young. We 

 do not suppose that the New York 

 Board of Education is constituted of 

 men who either know or care much 

 about science, or sound principles of 

 education ; but, as a new question is 

 forced upon them which they can not 

 escape, we respectfully commend to 

 their consideration the instructive ar- 

 ticle of Professor Wundt. 



HARRIS ON SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



Superintendent Hakris, of St. Louis, 

 has put forth an address on the " Meth- 

 od of Study in Social Science." The 

 subject treated is important, and we 

 took up his pamphlet hoping that, as 

 an advanced educational leader, he had 

 addressed himself to it with the prac- 

 tical view of determining the form and 

 place it should take as a popular study 

 in our American school system. We 

 have long felt that it was desirable to 

 have this done. Surely a State system 

 of education, upon which millions are 

 spent under the pretext that popular 

 intelligence is necessary to the main- 

 tenance of free government, can not 

 go on for ever ignoring all serious 

 study of the natural laws of society, or 

 the science of social relations. But we 

 were disappointed. Mr. Harris gives 

 us no help of the kind expected. On 

 the contrary, his mode of dealing with 

 the subject would seem to leave us no 

 social science at all. He, however, 

 speaks with an authority that is sure 

 to give weight to his utterances, and it 

 therefore becomes desirable to point 

 out in what respect his views are mis- 

 leading. 



