OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 57 



Reference has been made in these papers to a third general cause 

 contributing to the rescue of education from middle-age formalism. 

 This third cause was " discovery," that is, actual increase of knowl- 

 edge in various domains. This enlarged knowledge was, for the most 

 part, of a physical character ; it had reference to the visible, measura- 

 ble phenomena of Nature. There lay wrapped up in the wonder- 

 ful advancements of the eighteenth century both bane and blessing. 

 Society, as representing the external relations of men with one another, 

 was immeasurably benefited. Civilization, as we now know it, re- 

 ceived power to become only through the magnificent discernment of 

 natural laws which, beginning in the earlier part of the eighteenth 

 century, has proceeded with sure course to our own time. Health and 

 wealth and all physical comforts were secured for men as never before 

 by manifold scientific discoveries. We should go even further than 

 this and recognize the relation which obtains between man's physical 

 and his intellectual and moral well-being. To increase man's health- 

 fulness is to make possible an increase in his intellectual and moral 

 nature. An almost immeasurable amount of ignorance and vice must 

 be attributed to bodily disease and untoward physical surroundings. 

 To purify the air which man breathes and the food which he eats is to 

 take the first steps for his culture and his salvation. All gratitude, 

 then, for the work which has been done, and is now doing, to improve 

 man's physical condition ! Such work is organically connected with 

 whatsoever is truly progressive in intellect, morality, and religion. 



I have said that there was evil in the course of this movement in 

 the eighteenth century which we are now considering. Denial, or 

 rather that doubtful mind which is essential to the attainment of truth, 

 became an end and afforded pleasure. No evil that can befall man is 

 greater than the evil of loving to deny. This evil began its course in 

 English deism, went on to fuller manifestation in the admirers of 

 Voltaire, and found its completion in D'Holbach and Buchner. Let 

 not this statement be misunderstood. Men are sick, and know not the 

 disease which afflicts them. Disease is often concealed in its develop- 

 ment along the line of generations. The father appears rational and 

 well, the poisoned child becomes demented and dies. History is, as it 

 were, the life of one man prolonged ; whatsoever lies in this life finds 

 time for development and full manifestation. English deism was an 

 expression of the critical spirit in England. Whence did this spirit 

 receive its peculiar power ? From the deaths of persecuted seekers 

 after truth. Here and there a man searched till he found. , When he 

 spoke, they slew him in the name of God and the Church. The age of 

 discovery was come, and the instrument for the work was none other 

 than this same critical spirit, the spirit which would test, which would 

 inquire of Nature until she answered. Who should restrain this spirit, 

 or withhold its manifold applications ? When Tyndale and Shaftes- 

 bury, applying it to religion, resolved all creeds into one formula of 



