SCIENCE IN THE ENGLISH SCHOOLS. 559 



to impart the knowledge which has to be applied. Until a compara- 

 tively recent time, however, the imparting of knowledge was consid- 

 ered to be the sole purpose of education, and to be in itself the best 

 means of mental training ; so that educationists occupied themselves 

 more about the seed than about the soil, and were chiefly concerned to 

 teach those things which they thought it most important that a child 

 should know. The instruction given to the poor for many years was 

 almost limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, and elementary religious 

 instruction, while that imparted to the rich was laid upon the same 

 foundation, and was only carried further because the pupils had more 

 time at their disposal. In the employment of this time the instructors 

 could only teach what they knew; the most famous public schools and 

 the two great universities restricted themselves to giving their pupils 

 some knowledge of classics and mathematics. 



As soon as physiologists had discovered that all the faculties of the 

 intellect, however originating or upon whatever exercised, were func- 

 tions of a material organism of brain, absolutely dependent upon its in- 

 tegrity for their manifestation, and upon its growth and development 

 for their improvement, it became apparent that the true office of the 

 teacher of the future would be to seek to learn the conditions by which 

 the growth and the operations of the brain were controlled, in order 

 that he might be able to modify these conditions in a favorable man- 

 ner. The abstraction of the " mind" was so far set aside as to make it 

 certain that this mind could only act through a nervous structure, and 

 that the structure was subject to various influences for good or evil. It 

 became known that a brain cannot arrive at healthy maturity except- 

 ing by the assistance of a sufficient supply of healthy blood that is to 

 say, of good food and pure air. It also became known that the power 

 of a brain will ultimately depend very much upon the w;iy in which it 

 is habitually exercised, and that the practice of schools in this respect 

 left a great deal to be desired. A large amount of costly and preten- 

 tious teaching fails dismally for no other reason than because it is not 

 directed to any knowledge of the mode of action of the organ to which 

 the teacher endeavors to appeal ; and mental growth in many instances 

 occurs in spite of teaching rather than on account of it. Education, 

 which might once have been defined as an endeavor to expand the 

 intellect by the introduction of mechanically compressed facts, should 

 now be defined as an endeavor favorably to influence a vital process ; 

 and, when so regarded, its direction should manifestly fall somewhat 

 into the hands of those by whom the nature of vital processes has been 

 most completely studied. In other words, it becomes neither more nor 

 less than a branch of applied physiology ; and physiologists tell us with 

 regard to it that the common processes of teaching are open to the 

 grave objection that they constantly appeal to the lower centres of 

 nervous function, which govern the memory of and the reaction upon 

 sensations, rather than to those higher ones which are the organs of 



