EDITOR'S TABLE. 



123 



UXltor^s XMlt. 



AN EDUCATIONAL HERETIC. 



"TTT^E observe that Professor Peck 

 V V has not feared to include, in 

 his lately published collection of es- 

 says, the title of which, The Personal 

 Equation, no one has yet been quite 

 able to underetand, the paper on 

 American Education which appeared 

 in The Cosmopolitan last year, and 

 for which the editor of that periodical 

 felt compelled, in a manner, to apolo- 

 gize. Some of Professor Peck's ut- 

 terances, it must be acknowledged, 

 sound rather awful, considering the 

 age and the milieu in which they 

 are given to the world. When he 

 says, for example, that "■ every really 

 great thing that has been accom- 

 plished in the history of man has 

 been accomplished by an aristocra- 

 cy," he runs the risk of shocking, if 

 not the moral, the political sense of 

 the community no less rudely and 

 painfully than the anarchist does 

 when he passionately pronounces 

 the doom of private property and 

 recommends the treatment of all 

 social diseases by dynamite. We 

 are not sure, however, that Professor 

 Peck means as much harm to our 

 cherished institutions as the average 

 reader might be led to suppose. By 

 an aristocracy he does not mean a 

 privileged caste, but simply a body 

 of men trained to think and having 

 personal gifts of control. Even the 

 most extreme democracy must ac- 

 knowledge that there are such per- 

 sons. By whom are our " primaries " 

 dominated if not by individuals 

 trained to think along certain lines 

 which, by an abuse of language, w^e 

 call political, and who are masterful 

 in council and decisive in action ? 

 And how many men, all told, have 

 a really controlling voice in our na- 



tional politics ? We doubt very much 

 if their numerical proportion to the 

 whole community is greater than 

 that borne by the narrowest aristoc- 

 racies of the past to the communities 

 in which they have severally existed. 

 Yet without these men nothing, sub- 

 stantially, can be done. Their will is 

 law. It is true they rule partly by 

 fawning on the multitude, but they 

 can afford a little of this condescen- 

 sion to secure the reality of power. 

 " Paris is well worth a mass,'' said 

 Henry of Navarre, when he became 

 a Catholic on succeeding to the 

 throne of France ; and the boss 

 does not grudge a little servility 

 when needed to strengthen his hold 

 upon the people. In Professor Peck's 

 sense, then, we have an aristocracy 

 now — that is to say, a ruling class — 

 only it is not one out of which much 

 good can come. It is organized on 

 too bad a principle. 



It is apropos of education that 

 the professor gave expression to this 

 shocking sentiment. He does not be- 

 liev^e in compulsory education, and 

 evidently thinks that the state goes 

 too far now in facilitating education 

 for all. It is not, if we understand 

 him aright, that begrudges education 

 to any, but simply that he thinks the 

 present system, from a strictly prac- 

 tical point of view, is not working 

 well. " A sounder policy," he says, 

 "would be to make the way to edu- 

 cation easy, but not free, to all." As 

 we have before expressed our general 

 adherence to this view, we must be . 

 content to share whatever odium at- 

 taches to the professor for his re- 

 marks. A recent writer in a French 

 review * has been discussing what he 



* See Keviie des Re^Ties for January 15, 1898, 

 article by M. Henry Berenger. 



