5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



five short phrases, who should hinder ? When D'Holbach, in France, 

 and Biichnci - , in Germany, applying the same spirit to the supposed 

 elementary principles of intellect and morality, resolved these also into 

 movements among the brain-particles, who should hinder? No one 

 should hinder either deism or materialism, if it but leads to the truth, 

 to the real. What shall we say if the instrument come to be loved 

 more than the truth it was designed to make known ? What if denial 

 become precious for its own sake ? Here is calamity enough. Here 

 is the extreme ; — from credulity to incredulity — from omnivorous be- 

 lief to omnivorous denial. That there lay in the eighteenth-century 

 development both English deism and French sensualism is no more to 

 constitute a final condemnation of scientific discovery than the mon- 

 strosities done in religion's name should be alowed to sweep away the 

 beauties of a pure faith. When one concludes from inquisitions and 

 witch-burnings that there is only evil in Christianity, it is as though 

 he should deny all worth to science because of the critical spirit and 

 its monstrosity, a love of denial. 



English deism was applied to education in Defoe's remarkable book 

 " Robinson Crusoe." Man is to be educated according to Nature, 

 rather should we say by Nature. 



The contrast is sharp between the natural method of Comenius 

 and this new appeal to Nature. Here society, school-systems, books, 

 were to have no place. To Nature, as a sort of divine person, the 

 child was surrendered for education. It was supposed that Nature 

 would bring out the universal traits of mind, the universal religious 

 ideas, the universal social laws. We find here a most instructive illus- 

 tration of the tendency, so universal in human thinking, to personify 

 our abstractions. Words such as nature, justice, virtue, law, are used 

 by us to represent some independent entity or being. This ineradica- 

 ble habit has been the source of desperate evils in all directions. We 

 have now before us its application in education. We are told to fol- 

 low Nature. This Nature, be it understood, is an all-wise being, inde- 

 pendent of our activities, able to guide us with a perfect wisdom. 

 Such was the phase through which education must pass before the 

 true method of following Nature could appear. The sharply con- 

 trasted lines of training, now known as the scientific and the classical, 

 are being differentiated at the time of which we write. More than 

 this, if we look closely we shall find here a reason in history for re- 

 garding the scientific training as pre-eminently natural, as pre emi- 

 nently obedient to the command " Follow Nature." 



The critical spirit, applied to education, received brilliant expres- 

 sion in France and serious testing in Germany. I state some of the 

 fundamental principles of Rousseau's "ICmile" : "Everything is good 

 as it proceeds from the hand of the Creator, everything deteriorates in 

 the hands of man. We are educated by Nature, by men, by things. 

 The child should be educated for a common human calling, not for a 



