270 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dicated for the latter years of a liberal educa- 

 tional culture as a general one, equally en- 

 forced on all, is for the earliest. And it 

 further follows that, if at this later period the 

 student is permitted to follow the bent which 

 his previous training has served to develop, 

 his choice will fall upon those studies which 

 are in harmony with his bent without any 

 reference to the question whether they are, 

 in the common sense of the word, "easy" 

 studies or " difficult." For these terms 

 "easy" and "difficult" as applied to mat- 

 ters which concern the understanding, admit 

 of two quite different modes of definition. 



No mental pursuit is easy if it be distaste- 

 ful, no matter how small the labors its prose- 

 cution demands ; and no similar pursuit is 

 difficult if pleasing, even though to follow it 

 may exact the severest and the most persist- 

 ently sustained exercise of the faculties. And, 

 in corroboration of the truth of this proposi- 

 tion, it may here be stated that, in Columbia 

 College, under the system which permits the 

 members of the senior class to select, for the 

 most part, studies which they prefer to pur- 

 sue, there is no lack of volunteers for a sub- 

 ject commonly reported to be so difficult and 

 forbidding as the calculus, or as obscure as 

 the metaphysics ; nor is there, on the other 

 hand, any observable predominance in the 

 number who select a branch so fascinating as 

 physics, or so practical as technology or chem- 

 istry. 



The distribution has been, in fact, approxi- 

 mately equal among all the studies presented 

 for option. And this result is one which we 

 may reasonably look for when parallel courses 

 of study are offered to the choice of the stu- 

 dent during the later years of the academic 

 course, whatever might be true if the offer 

 were made at the beginning. For the effect 

 of the early years of training is to bring out 

 the character of each individual mind, and to 

 determine what are its native idiosyncrasies, 

 and what it is possible to make of it. And 

 though the doctrine that all the faculties of 

 all minds should be developed as far as pos- 

 sible by appropriate educational exercise and 

 discipline is a true doctrine, yet the doctrine 

 that all faculties of all minds are equally ca- 

 pable of development is a fallacy which no 

 enlightened educator will think of maintain- 

 ing. 



That every faculty should receive its fair 

 amount of fostering attention is certainly just 

 and right, but to expect that this fair amount 

 or that any amount of individual culture, 

 however laborious, will secure to every in- 

 dividual an equal power or chance of success 

 in any given direction as, for instance, in 

 poetry or mathematical research is as unrea- 



sonable as to expect that every sapiing in a 

 nursery may, by proper care, be made equally 

 prolific of fruit. After all that has been 6aid 

 about the desirability and the importance of 

 symmetrical mental development, and of the 

 duty of shaping the educational culture with 

 a view to secure such a development, the sim- 

 ple fact is that all minds develop themselves 

 unsymmetrically, just as certainly as that dif- 

 ferent minerals crystallize into different geo- 

 metrical figures ; and that it is just as hope- 

 less for the educationist to look for that ideal 

 conformity and perfection of mental propor- 

 tion among his pupils which has been so 

 much insisted on as the end at which educa- 

 tion should aim as it would be for the chem- 

 ist to attempt by his science to compel all his 

 salts to crystallize into spheres. 



The great evil of the invariable curricu- 

 lum of study in our colleges at the present 

 time is that it makes it impossible, at least 

 after the end of the second year of the course, 

 to teach any subject with satisfactory thor- 

 oughness. From an examination of the pro- 

 gramme of instruction in Columbia College 

 for the junior and senior years I select my 

 own college rather than another that ray re- 

 marks may not seem invidious it appears 

 that if every student were compelled to take 

 every subject, and if to every subject should 

 be given an equal proportion of the available 

 time, no single subject, if pursued continu- 

 ously, could occupy a longer period than 

 about a month. How is it possible to expect 

 results satisfactory either to instructor or to 

 learner from such a state of things as this ? 

 There is no remedy lor the evil but that of 

 permitting the student to concentrate his at- 

 tention upon those subjects which are most 

 in harmony with his native bent, and to leave 

 the others to those to whom they in turn may 

 be more acceptable. 



BE LA YE LEY E ON SOCIALLSM. 



"No apology is needed for printing 

 the long article of M. de Laveleye in 

 reply to Herbert Spencer, together with 

 the latter's brief rejoinder. The Bel- 

 gian state socialist is a man of mark, 

 who believes in the extension of the 

 powers of government for the general 

 purposes of philanthropy; and it was 

 natural that he should see the need of 

 breaking the force of Spencer's argu- 

 ment. But, quite regardless of that 

 result, his paper is of interest as re- 

 vealing the condition of mind of a 

 man admitted to he strong in politics 



