126 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nate claims leave little room, of course, 

 for the recognition of tlie merits of 

 other men ; all who came since are hut 

 followers and imitators of Oomte. It 

 was supposed that Mr. Spencer had 

 done some important original work in 

 philosophy, psychology, and sociology, 

 but Mr. Frederic Harrison says he has 

 given the world nothing "but a very 

 unsuccessful attempt to re-edit Oomte's 

 work on a plan of his own." 



Such a charge as this could not as- 

 suredly be suffered to pass ; and it is 

 well that it was thus sweepingly made 

 while Mr. Spencer is living and able to 

 deal with it. The publicatrion of Har- 

 rison's address opened a controversy at 

 once in the leading London newspapers. 

 We have room for only a part of it, and 

 we select the most important part. We 

 reprint two letters by Mr. Spencer, 

 which are of interest as throwing light 

 upon the true origin of his system. It 

 will not be denied that Mr. Spencer 

 knows more about it than anybody 

 else ; and when attacked by this impu- 

 tation of wholesale plagiarism, the al- 

 ternative of incompetence to judge 

 where his leading conceptions came 

 from, it is desirable to know what he 

 has to say, both as a question of the 

 history of thought and as a matter of 

 justice to himself. We have a vast 

 apparatus of legislatures and courts to 

 secure to men their material posses- 

 sions; but, when it comes to property in 

 ideas, nothing remains for thinkers but 

 to lose it or to defend it themselves. 



IS THE CONTRAST VALID t 



President Portee, of Yale, has 

 lately made answer, in the "Princeton 

 Review," to the argument of Presi- 

 dent Eliot, of Harvard, in the " Cent- 

 ury," entitled " What is a Liberal Edu- 

 cation ? " At the close of his paper, Dr. 

 Porter refers to the Appendix to the 

 third edition of "A College Fetich," in 

 which Mr. Adams has included the 

 chief portion of the paper of Professor 



James on "The Classical Question in 

 Germany," and some other matter from 

 " The Popular Science Monthly," 



We are glad to observe that Dr. Por- 

 ter admits the essential justice of Pro- 

 fessor James's case. The " Berlin Re- 

 port " had been translated and widely 

 circulated to show that, by long and ex- 

 tensive German experience in the trial 

 of two school systems, it was settled 

 that classical education is superior to 

 scientific education; and that this was 

 admitted even by the most eminent sci- 

 entific men. Professor James proved 

 that the " Report " settles no such ques- 

 tion, and Dr. Porter so far acknowl- 

 edges this as to say, " It may certainly 

 be conceded to the critic that the 'prac- 

 tical trial ' of the two systems of study 

 — the classical and the non- or less 

 classical — was not in all respects fair or 

 decisive." If Dr. Porter had said it 

 was not in any respect fair or decisive, 

 we believe he would have been still 

 nearer the truth. 



But we are just now more concerned 

 with another point of his statement in 

 relation to the validity of the contrast, 

 for important educational purposes, be- 

 tween the study of words and the study 

 of things. Dr. Porter refers to this 

 matter as follows : 



The long extracts -from Professor E. L. 

 Yoiunans, taken from " The Popular Science 

 Monthly," are sij^nilicant as urging the point 

 made by President Eliot, that classical is es- 

 sentially inferior to scientific culture because 

 " it trains the verbal memory and the reason 

 so far as it is exercised in transposing thought 

 from one form of expression to another, . . . 

 while the new method cultivates the pow- 

 ers of observation and the faculty of reason- 

 ing upon the objects of experience so as to 

 educate the judgment upon the problems of 

 life. . . . The problems of life, as we under- 

 stand them, are to a very large extent those 

 which concern human relations, and these are 

 quite as important as those which are com- 

 monly called facts or phenomena. To a large 

 extent they are not material relations, and are 

 not subjects of sensible experiment or verifi- 

 cation. The facts and the reasoning must 

 also be stated in language clearly, forcibly, 

 and convincingly, in order to convince the 



