RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 47 



without danger, be lifted bodily from cognate sciences — any- 

 more than the concepts of pure mathematics can be transferred 

 complete to mechanics, but must rather be used to further the 

 development of the special concepts required in the latter 

 domain. Prof. H. Bompas Smith puts this point clearly in 

 his plea for an educational psychology with interests and special 

 methods of its own : " The illegitimate procedure is to take 

 over the selection of material and the detailed methods of one 

 branch of science, and force them into the service of some 

 distinct but kindred interest, without effecting the modifications 

 which are required " {Journ. of Exp. Ped., 1919, 5, 2, pp. 57-67). 

 This view clearly involves us in educational experiment in the 

 school itself. In the interval between the first and second 

 editions of Dr. Rusk's Experimental Education— that is, from 

 19 1 2 to 1919 — -such experimentation has grown from small and 

 tentative beginnings to firmly established foundations for 

 future work. Dr. Rusk goes so far as to assert in his later 

 edition that " we have now reached a point in educational 

 enlightenment where opposition to the scientific method must 

 be frankly pronounced a prejudice." One has only to glance 

 through the papers published, during the few years of its ex- 

 istence, in the Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, to see that 

 there is much to justify that assertion. In his lecture 

 before the Modern Language Association, to inaugurate the 

 Department of Educational Experiment, Mr. E. Alhson Peers 

 contends that the day of the mere opinionative pedant has 

 passed. " Not only can experiment alone inquire into ques- 

 tions of method, but the results of experiment alone can com- 

 mand respect," The old heresy that the personality of the 

 teacher is a factor which will upset all experiments is, he con- 

 tinues, mere nonsense. All experimentalists know what careful 

 allowance has to be made for the personal element in this 

 science as in others. To the opinion that personality is the 

 only thing that matters in teaching, Mr. Peers simply rephes : 

 " Personality is, of course, a most important factor in educa- 

 tion. . . . But why not have everywhere the best teaching 

 obtainable, and the personality where we can, in addition, to 

 inspire it?" {Journ. of Exp. Ped., 1920, 5, 4, pp. 179-87)- 

 To this we may add that the one in some degree involves the 

 other. For we do not mean by personality, in this context, 

 mere individual idiosyncrasy, but something which involves 

 the same elements of self-control that are reflected in the 

 control of subject-matter we call method. 



(3) The ground of criticism of this view, that so far as 

 method is concerned education is a science of co-ordinate rank 

 with the other sciences, has significantl}" shifted. What in- 

 telligent criticism there is does not now consist in the contention 



