750 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



METAMORPHOSES IN EDUCATION. 



By Professor A. E. DOLBEAR. 



TNSTITUTIONS are necessary for society of all grades. The 

 -L Hottentot needs tliem as well as we and has them. In society 

 that has been stable for a long time the institutions have been so 

 adjusted that they are very perfectly adapted to the needs of the 

 people, as those in China are. In a community where nothing 

 new is learned and nothing forgotten, the mechanism for the 

 maintenance of society runs with the least friction, and in a good 

 sense the institutions of a country are the mechanical supports 

 which maintain its form and give coherence to it. When one 

 thinks of an Englishman, a German, a Russian, or a Turk, he is 

 not thinking of one who chances to speak this or that tongue or 

 who has this or that cast of countenance, but of one who has been 

 molded by certain institutions in which he was brought up, and 

 which have given to each one a personality different from any of 

 the others, which personality has adapted him to live comfortably 

 with an environment different from the others, and in which each 

 of the others would find more or less that was disagreeable, and 

 in which, at any rate for a time, he would be uncomfortable. This 

 fitting a man for his environment is education in the large sense, 

 and every human being is educated thus. The great difference 

 between both individuals and nations is traceable to the breadth 

 of the environment or the number and variety of institutions that 

 are operative in their growth. 



Wherein is the difference between the German and the Turk, 

 that one is a synonym for civilization while the other is a symbol 

 of barbarism and lethargy ? One has been educated not only by 

 his own institutions but by all other available ones; he has laid 

 the world under tribute and the heavens bring to him comforts, 

 while the other with as good opportunities has been for centuries 

 content to shut out from himself all foreign influences whatever. 

 His environment has been simply that of his own involuntary 

 efforts, and it has made him a beast, as it will any who are con- 

 tent with less than the universe can give. 



This environment of which I speak is not one of locality 

 merely, and does not imply that the one who has traveled most is 

 the best educated. The mountain does go to Mohammed if Mo- 

 hammed commands it aright. Through literature and science all 

 institutions are available for the one who wants them. That is a 

 very poor education that fits a man to be a citizen content with a 

 dozen neighbors who all do and think as he does. That is the 

 highest and best education that fits one to be an inhabitant of the 



