EDITOR'S TABLE. 



62: 



of education. These able discussions, 

 we are happy to say, have been increas- 

 ingly appreciated ; and it is gratifying 

 to note that the view we have steadily 

 urged for these many years begins to 

 be widely accepted as the basis of a new 

 departure in the progress of scientific 

 education. A conspicuous illustration 

 of this has recently been afforded by 

 the course of the most influential jour- 

 nal in England. There has been a sys- 

 tematic movement in that country to get 

 a larger share of scientific study in the 

 lower schools ; and, under the vigor- 

 ous leadership of Sir John Lubbock, 

 in the House of Commons, efforts have 

 been made to modify school legislation 

 so as to enforce this result. A majority 

 has not yet been gained, but the op- 

 position is giving way, and the end 

 sought will undoubtedly soon be at- 

 tained. Upon the last and recent de- 

 feat of Sir John Lubbock's measure, 

 the London Times came out with a 

 leading editorial on the right side, and 

 which is chiefly remarkable for the ad- 

 vanced and unqualified position which 

 it takes. We reprint this article of the 

 Times in the present number of the 

 Monthly, together with the comments 

 of the editor of Nature upon it. How 

 completely the writer sustains the views 

 that we have long labored to inculcate, 

 is well shown in the following instruc- 

 tive passage : 



" As soon as physiologists had discov- 

 ered that all the faculties of the intellect, 

 however originating or upon whatever ex- 

 ercised, were functions of a material organ- 

 ism or brain, absolutely dependent upon 

 its integrity 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 condi- 

 tions in a favorable manner. The abstrac- 

 tion 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 in- 

 fluences for good or evil. It became known 



that a brain cannot arrive at healthy matu- 

 rity excepting 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 ulti- 

 mately depend very much upon the way 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 pretentious teaching fails dis- 

 mally for no. other reason than because it is 

 not directed by 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 teach- 

 ing rather than on account of it. Educa- 

 tion, 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 man- 

 ifestly 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 func- 

 tion, which govern the memory of and the 

 reaction upon sensations, rather than to 

 those of higher ones which are the organs 

 of ratiocination and of volition. Hence a 

 great deal which passes for education is 

 really a degradation of the human brain to 

 efforts below its natural capacities. This 

 applies especially to book-work, in which 

 the memory of sounds in given sequences is 

 often the sole demand of the teacher, and 

 in which the pupil, instead of knowing the 

 meaning of the sounds, often does not know 

 what 'meaning' means. As soon as the 

 sequence of the sounds is forgotten, noth- 

 ing remains, and we are then confronted by 

 a question which was once proposed in an 

 inspectorial report: 'To what purpose in 

 after-life is a boy taught, if the intervention 

 of a school vacation is to be a sufficient 

 excuse for entirely forgetting his instruc- 

 tion?'" 



THE CLASSICS IN GERMANY. 



TnosE of our readers who have pe- 

 rused the previous portions of Prof. 

 Du Bois-Reymond's article on " Civili- 

 zation and Science " will hardly need 

 that we should call their attention to 



