FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 419 



again and again, as eacli generation comes to get and to give its share of tlie 

 ■world's good? Or is it strange tliat so vital a matter to all interests should 

 be the pot of theorizers, those universal geniuses who seek a panacea for all 

 evils? Quackery is by no means conOned to one profession. Every good work 

 has gained a ridiculous side from some of its hobby-riders, and popular edu- 

 cation has not suffered least from such one-sided views. But the more we 

 know of each otlior's experience and thought the less of miscliicf will bo done 

 by any new experiment; so we may riglitly venture to discuss the modern 

 forms of the same old questions. The fact that "doctors disagree" has not 

 kept the world from actual progress in combating disease, nor need it keep 

 us from success in the combat of learning with ignorance, of efJiciency with 

 helplessness. 



The aim, I suppose, of every system of education in any age, is efficiency in 

 all that pertains to genuine manhood. The essential principles of develop- 

 ment in our common human nature, too, must ever remain the same. A gen- 

 eral view of this aim and these principles, as well as some suggestions as to 

 methods, I had the pleasure of presenting on a similar occasion one year ago, 

 under the theme, "A Practical Education." These principles can never be 

 lost sight of; and yet their practical application at every step must vary with 

 each change of circumstances. A half century ago, when "Uncle Sam was 

 rich enough to give us all a farm," every body was satis6ed that with free 

 schools well supported, our social, commercial and national prosperity was 

 secured. There was little question then as to scope and methods. A quarter 

 of a century since, when cities had begun to hide their thousands of tradesmen 

 and mechanics and menials from the healthy outer life, and all through our east- 

 ern borders' factory and farm were beginning to crowd each other, the prob- 

 lem of social prosperity, at least, assumed a new phase; and the world asked 

 if our schools had kept pace with our wants in the kind of knowledge taught. 

 Then came the educational war of science with the classics, the noise of whose 

 combats still echoes occasionally from tlie remoter outskirts of the field, al- 

 though the main question is happily settled by a harmonious blending of the 

 two in college curriculum and school classification. 



Now, when extreme division of labor has cramped the powers of body and 

 mind among a crowded city population; wlien invention has been stimulated 

 to a waste of intelligence, energy and wealth in almost every employment; 

 when a generous trade, through excessive speculation, has degenerated into 

 greed ; when wit is thought to afford a shorter road to wealth than work offers; 

 when the wants of the masses outrun their ability to meet them in spite of our 

 education, it is natural and proper that we should have a new questioning of 

 our means of culture. 



Have we not, of late, fostered learning before ability, and so encouraged 

 mere curious speculation rather than practical talent? Have not our tests of 

 scholarship by examination been too much a trial of capacity for acquiring 

 memorized facts, and too little a proof of thorough understanding of founda- 

 tion principles in science and literature? Wiiy do we all laugh with a wink of 

 earnestness at the newspaper story about the boy's perfect readiness to give 

 correctly for twenty-five cents the capital cities of Europe, and his equally 

 ready answer to the question whether they are animal or vegetable? Is there 

 not a quite general feeling that the youtli in our public schools know too much 

 and do too little? Who can answer effectively the current complaints from 

 newspaper and platform that our highest education is compatible with a poeti- 

 cal idiocy? These are questions which crowd upon school boards and into 



