27© 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ber of persons in any community can acquire 

 wealth of knowledge, and the only thought 

 on which I wish to insist is this : these few 

 must also get it for themselves, and, more- 

 over, must work hard for it. 



It is a hackneyed aphorism that there is 

 no royal road to knowledge, although an in- 

 credible amount of pains has been taken to 

 make one. Nature in this affair, as usual, 

 has been a good, wise mother to us all ; for 

 it is not desirable to make the acquisition of 

 knowledge easy, for the main point in scien- 

 tific education is to secure the liighest activity 

 of the human mind in the pursuit of truth — 

 an activity tried and disciplined by hardship 

 and nourished on hardy fare. The quantity 

 of food is of less importance ; everything de- 

 pends on establishing a good constitutional 

 digestion. The harder the dinner is to chew, 

 the stronger grows the eater. Canned science 

 as a steady diet is as unwholesome for the 

 growing mind as canned fruits and vegetables 

 for the growing body. The wise teacher imi- 

 tates the method of Nature, who has but one 

 answer for all questions : " Find it out for 

 yourself, and you will then know it better 

 than if I were to tell you beforehand." 



The great vice of current education 

 is here squarely hit. As Huxley says, 

 it is " spoon - victuals " ; acquisition 

 made easy by elaborate simplification 

 and explanation which leaves wholly 

 out of view the fundamental truth that 

 mental power can only be acquired 

 through the effort of active exercise. 

 This is the supreme requirement, but it 

 is this which is everywhere, and by all 

 pretexts and devices, evaded. We are 

 still in the lesson-learning, print-wor- 

 shiping stage of education, almost as 

 much as they were when children were 

 taught from the catechism — 

 " My book and heart 

 Shall never part." 



But the true purpose of education, 

 as can never be enough enforced, is not 

 to learn lessons and get explanations 

 from teachers, and to accumulate infor- 

 mation, but to develop power in the 

 minds of the young to observe carefully, 

 to reason correctly, and to think inde- 

 pendently about the things that are im- 

 portant and vital in the experience of 

 life. The minds of the young require 

 to be cultivated and trained in this kind 



of activity ; but all the mighty apparatus 

 of books, teachers, superintendents, and 

 boards of education, backed by millions 

 of money, instead of leading to this re- 

 sult, stand in the way of it. The two 

 methods are incompatible. Listening 

 to explanations and cramming the con- 

 tents of books are radically antagonistic 

 to thinking things out, and to that self- 

 instruction the sole condition of which 

 is mental effort, and that should be kept 

 in view as the essential thing to be se- 

 cured in all education of children and 

 youth. 



THE EPIDE:^IC at MONTREAL. 



The terrible pestilence, which, for 

 several months, has been raging in the 

 beautiful city of Montreal, carrying 

 away thousands of its inhabitants, 

 teaches a painful lesson of the malign 

 consequences to a community of ig- 

 norance and superstition when strong 

 enough to set at defiance the resources 

 that intelligent experience has furnished 

 to arrest its progress. It is not as if the 

 people had been struck by some new 

 and mysterious disease before which 

 they were powerless. It is not as with 

 the plagues of former ages, when nothing 

 was known that could be done to arrest 

 them. The saddest aspect of the Mont- 

 real calamity is not that multitudes have 

 been swept into unripe graves, but that 

 this vast mortality could have been avoid- 

 ed. That sraaU-pox is practically a pre- 

 ventable disease is established ; but to 

 what purpose, when all the apparatus of 

 self-defense in a civilized community is 

 completely paralyzed? A comparative- 

 ly small element of the population, ig- 

 norant, prejudiced, and pious, makes a 

 blind and desperate resistance to the 

 only measures that can bring relief; and 

 they resort to penance, invocation of 

 saints, prayers to Heaven, and solemn 

 processions, to arrest the course of con- 

 tagion, over which these have no more 

 influence than they would have to ar- 

 rest the course of the St. Lawrence! 

 The chief ravages of the disease have 



