METAMORPHOSES IN EDUCATION. 757 



-were all in its favor, that the Christ of the Church is unhis- 

 torical ; when a man like Clifford says he parted with Christian 

 beliefs " with such searching trouble as only cradle faiths can 

 cause " ; when a historian like ex-President White, of Cornell, de- 

 clares that the anthropologists have destroyed the whole theo- 

 logical theory of the fall of man ! 



The significance of all this lies here. Our institutions of learn- 

 ing were all founded upon theories of life, of mind, of society, 

 of history, which have broken down. There is not a single one 

 that has stood the test of modern science, and disintegration set 

 in some time back. It came first in a demand that colleges should 

 furnish a knowledge of matters that books and periodicals were 

 teeming with, and for which there was no provision in the curric- 

 ulum. It came from those who objected to fooling away their 

 time in the study of languages that had proved their unfitness for 

 the needs of mankind, and so had perished from off the face of 

 the earth ; who objected to be forced to the study of history that 

 was not true. A sop was offered by some institutions in the 

 shape of scientific courses where instruction was given in the new 

 sciences physics, chemistry, geology, etc. These, however, were 

 treated in a most unworthy manner by text-books and discourses 

 instead of by practice ; second, as if they were topics unrelated to 

 each other, and thus, having no necessary relations to other mat- 

 ters held to be of much greater importance ; and, third, the men 

 who pursued them to the exclusion of the old curriculum were 

 snubbed and made to appear as of an inferior grade. Under such 

 circumstances, what should be expected but an educational fail- 

 ure ? The institutions, as institutions, felt a profound contempt 

 for the new demand, apparently considering it a kind of craze 

 which in a little time would die out, and matters would settle back 

 into the historical ways which time had honored and experience 

 approved. As we now know, nothing of the kind happened, for 

 the very good reason that the old curriculum and the new knowl- 

 edge were incompatibles. The new knowledge was not and could 

 not be assimilated by the adherents of the old. Amalgamation to 

 any extent was impossible, and compromise was equally impos- 

 sible, for the new has destroyed the foundations of nearly every- 

 thing the old held to be true. 



What wonder, then, is it to-day that educational institutions 

 show such visible signs of fermentation ! Metamorphosis is tak- 

 ing place rapidly. Among schoolmasters one hears a good deal 

 about pedagogy, but the pedagogy is a mongrel, a kind of cross 

 between a theory built upon experience with minds fed on abnor- 

 mal diet, and a metaphysics as extinct as the dodo. I feel like 

 advising all such to go to Clark University and study psychology. 



The pedagogy which is in consonance with the new psychology 



