EDITOR'S TABLE. 



699 



elements of a true science of life are I 

 unknown, and who, with all their lit- 

 erary, professional, and social acquire- 

 ments, are willing to descend in their 

 daily practice to the lowest depths of 

 infamy. Think of the two things 

 " education " and hrutal, merciless vice 

 going hand in handl Alas! it is not 

 education ; it is that wretched, sophis- 

 tical veneering of accomplishments 

 which usurps the name of education. 

 It may embrace in the case of medi- 

 cal men must embrace a certain 

 amount of scientific instruction; but 

 what it lacks is the true scientific grasp 

 of life as a whole. We are no fanatical 

 believers in the saving efficacy of a lit- 

 tle smattering, nor even of much spe- 

 cial knowledge, of physics and chemis- 

 try ; but we are firm believers in the 

 moralizing effects of a true philosophy 

 of life, supported and illustrated by 

 constant reference to verifiable facts. 

 All sciences are but parts of one great 

 science, and the highest function of 

 universal science is to teach us how to 

 live. The state, in so far as it under- 

 takes to fit the young for " positions in 

 life," acts upon the old sophistical idea 

 of education as a tiling of accomplish- 

 ments designed to promote individual 

 success. Such education can not of 

 itself have any moralizing effect, and 

 may have a demoralizing. The change 

 that is needed is to abandon that view, 

 and to make education a preparation 

 for life in the broadest sense. Whether 

 the state can adopt the latter principle, 

 and bring its teaching up to the proper 

 level, remains to be seen. If it can 

 not, its condemnation is definitively 

 pronounced, for no other conception of 

 education will meet the requirements 

 of the future. 



THE STUDY OF FACTS. 



The subject of education has been 

 treated from many points of view, but 

 we do not know that it can be more 

 profitably considered than in its bearing 

 upon the power of recognizing and deal- 

 ing with facts. The educated man, ac- 



cording to our conception, is he who 

 knows a fact when he sees it and knows 

 what to do with it. The educated man 

 is the man who has an instinct for facts, 

 who searches for them as for hidden 

 treasure, and, having got them, knows 

 how to set them in logical and lumi- 

 nous order. It is the man who knows 

 and feels that facts make up the very 

 backbone of human life and of every- 

 thing else, and that to ignore them, or 

 to play fast and loose with them, is 

 simply to court failure and loss. 



The true fact corresponds with the 

 true idea ; and the man of facts is there- 

 fore a man of ideas. He constantly 

 seeks to see the relations of things, and 

 only when he discerns relations does he 

 feel himself to be in the presence of 

 facts. To have an appetite for unre- 

 lated facts is as unwholesome as to have 

 an appetite for slate-pencils. " Grad- 

 grind" is not the type of the man of 

 facts: he is rather the type of a man 

 who does not know what a fact is, who 

 is all unconscious that our knowledge 

 in regard to anything has to round itself 

 to some completeness and symmetry 

 before we can claim to possess facts. 

 A true fact is a living, not a dead, thing; 

 and it proves that it is alive by bearing 

 fruit: it produces something, and, like 

 wisdom, it is justified of its children. 



What we have in view, however, on 

 the present occasion is, not to pronounce 

 a eulogium on facts after all, they can 

 take pretty good care of themselves 

 but to draw attention to the extent to 

 w r hich, in spite of all that has been done 

 for " education," an inability to discern 

 and do justice to facts still prevails in 

 the world. Ask any intelligent business 

 man what the chief trouble is that he 

 encounters among his employes, or what 

 it is that impairs the usefulness of most 

 of them ; and he will tell you, not in 

 so many words, but in substance, that 

 it is their imperfect apprehension of 

 facts, and consequent inability to draw 

 conclusions that common sense itself 

 dictates. He will say, perhaps, " Out 

 of a score of men I can only find one 



