232 TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



a matter for congratulation, that our l>egislature has bet-n brought to 

 make tlie teacher's qualifications embrace the rudiments of the natural 

 sciences; and it is a further subject of congratulation, that the teachers 

 generally have shown such commendable diligence in fitting themselveri 

 for this branch of their duties. At no time, since we have had a school 

 system, have the teachers studied so much as they have since last winter. 

 A whole army of men and women have advanced to a higher educational 

 position in the past year, and in qualifying themselves to discharge 

 their new duties, very many have learned what they did not really 

 know before: that is, how really natural the natural sciences are; how 

 pleasant their acquirement is, and what an excellent mental discipline 

 they are; and, by contrast, how ci'/'-////V/d;/ the abstract sciences are. The 

 formidable plea entered in favor of classical education, which has, time 

 out ol" mind, been applied as a bar to the progress of the natural system 

 of' education, is that the classics, belles-lettres, higher mathematics, men- 

 tal science (so-called,) are such excellent "mental discipline." 



That plea is but a sham and fraud. A mental discipline for what } 

 Teach a man to ignore and despise the present, that he may respect, 

 deify the past; to turn from living, developing, magnificent nature, to 

 embrace and love the dead, artificial past, even canonizing its sins as 

 more to be revered than modern virtue; to educate a man wrong side 

 to, and even wrong end up, so that his only ideas of progress are to ape 

 what some dead man was, or has done ; to cramp the intellect as the 

 Chinese cramp and dwarf their children's feet. That is what is called 

 "mental discipline," and from the which, "Good Lord, deliver us." 



We have seen centuries of such kind of discipline, and the progress 

 of these centuries has all been achieved in opposition to its spirit, and 

 generally in opposition to the clamors, scoffs, and jeers of its devotees. 

 The people have been in advance of the schools in sentiment, if not 

 in attainment ; and the world has progressed, for that reason alone. 

 The "mental discipline" of abstract education is multiplying law- 

 yers, doctors, professors, and gentlemen (so-called), who love their 

 dignity and their emoluments, but who are seldom willing to adopt 

 an idea, except it has had the sanction of some half-heathen of old 

 times. The new education, which is now soon to take the place of 

 the old, which, every sign indicates, is fast passing away, proceeds 

 upon the principle that the knowledge most useful is that most 

 fitted to be imparted, making utility the first condition. " What shall I 

 learn first V is answered by, " That which is the most useful to know." 

 And the most useful knowledge for the youngest scholar is a knowledge 

 of things, not thoughts. Cultivate the perceptive intellect, and the reflec- 

 tive intellect will naturally keep pace and grow with it; and the mind 

 will be disciplined just as God meant it to be, when He made the babe 

 and the youth the earnest inquirers they are. 



" But is this a report upon Botany and Vegetable Physiology ? " say 

 you. As the greater includes the less in abstract philosophy, so the nat- 

 ural sciences include botany, and thus we have botany in our common 



