210 PREJUDICE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 



hide-bound pedants, without knowledge of man's nature or of 

 boys' ; or of aught save their lexicons and their account books. 

 Innumerable dead vocables they crammed into us, and called it 

 fostering the growth of mind. IIow can an inanimate, mechanical 

 gerund-grinder foster the growth of anything : much more of 

 mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots lit- 

 tered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious 

 contact with spirit; thought kindling itself at the fire of living 

 thought. * * The Ilinterschlag professors knew syntax enough, 

 and of human soul thus much : that it had a faculty called memory, 

 and could be acted on through the muscular integuments by appli- 

 ance of birch root." — Pedagogy, p. 84. Or come down to this 

 very winter of 1875-6, when the distinguished professor of Greek 

 in Edinburgh complains of the great University of Oxford, that 

 " a great deal of harm is done to 3'oung men, who are merely 

 drilled like a parcel of old Prussian pipe-clay sergeants." — 

 Weekly Scotsman, Nov. 20, 18T5, p. 6. 



Of course, when the methods used in the languages rule in the 

 study of science the results are not satisfactory. "This, there- 

 fore," said Bacon, " is the first distemper of learning, when men 

 study words and not matter." Science, to be disciplinary, has its 

 own methods. Properly pursued, they have probably no superiors 

 in the development of the perceptive and discriminative faculties, 

 of the judgment, the imagination, and the power of generalization. 

 Their influence over the moral emotions is profound and healthy. 

 The subject has received so much discussion of late years that I 

 forbear to enter it farther at this time. 



A contrast. Here, then, is a man who has been classically edu- 

 cated. He expatiates free o'er all this scene of man. lie under- 

 stands the languages in which the literature of the world is written, 

 lie writes histories, guides thought on many subjects. Shall we 

 not call him learned ? The world does so and justly. And yet 

 perhaps nature seals from his eyes its mysteries, lie knows no 

 chemistry, nor botany, nor geology. The enlargement of the sun 

 as it rises in the east, the shifting colors and scenes of animal and 

 vegetable life are outside of his thoughts and knowledge. Learned 

 and cultured as he is, it is after all in a confined sphere of thought 

 and enjoyment. lie goes to spend his vacation at the sea-side. 

 What takes he for his thoughts and study ? a pocket volume of 

 the Greek poet Euripides, and writes us the thoughts that arise as 

 he reads, in prose so beautiful that we are constrained to read. 



