EDITOR'S TABLE, 



701 



be has followed, but be is among those 

 who pre-eininently have no business to 

 follow bad examples, either in practice or 

 in precept. But the Paterson Principal 

 will search a long time before finding a 

 precedent as bad as that which he him- 

 self has set. He goes voluntarily into 

 the business of robbing foreign authors 

 when nearly everybody else is trying 

 to stop it; he cuts up his book at his 

 own caprice while the author is him- 

 self revising and condensing it; and 

 then he plots with other educators to 

 secure the adoption of the dishonest 

 edition, to the exclusion of the honest 

 and superior book. Such things might 

 be expected of a sordid and unprinci- 

 pled huckster in the publication busi- 

 ness, but they are to be reprobated in 

 the principal of a high-school. That 

 he is backed by other teachers does not 

 help the matter, but only still further 

 exemplifies the lax and dull state of 

 mind in regard to right and wrong 

 which they thus evince, and which 

 goes far to explain the backwardness 

 and neglect of moral education in our 

 schools. 



STABILITY I2f SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT. 



Ix the " Commercial Advertiser" of 

 January 14tli there is an able article, 

 evidently from the master-mind of that 

 journal, on Spencer's evolution philoso- 

 phy, which, from the interest of the 

 questions raised, as well as its very de- 

 cided views, deserves some critical no- 

 tice. After passing encomiums on Mr. 

 Spencer for his noble and disinterested 

 aims, the comprehensiveness of his 

 work, his immense results considered 

 as an intellectual achievement, his 

 painstaking industry, and indefatigable 

 persistency of purpose, the writer re- 

 marks that, admirable as it all is, it still 

 has about it "a touch of the pathetic." 

 Not that it may never be finished, as 

 many fear, but that, even if completed, 

 it will quickly take its place among the 

 systems of futile speculation with which 



the human mind has teemed for these 

 thousands of years. After referring to 

 the sad experience of Buckle, the writer 

 says: " Mr. Spencer's case is different ; 

 he may be able to finish his work, but 

 the view of it that comes to us is, that 

 when it is finished it may prove, in 

 scope and substance, no more than a 

 brilliant dream. The theory of evolu- 

 tion, in the construction of which he 

 has spent so many laborious days and 

 nights, lavished such wonderful powers 

 of observation and generalization, and 

 exhibited such an ingenuity of fancy, 

 collecting such masses of knowledge 

 and scintillating such flashes of sugges- 

 tion, will, after all, share the fate of 

 other merely speculative fabrics, and, 

 like them, in spite of a certain color of 

 science which he has been enabled to 

 give it, fade away in the advancing 

 light of real knowledge." 



We can not help thinking that this 

 judgment manifests an imperfect appre- 

 ciation of the intellectual revolution 

 which marks off ancient and mediaeval 

 from modern thought, in so far as tliis 

 represents a new era of science. It can 

 hardly be contended that science in the 

 present state of its development counts 

 for nothing in its influence upon sys- 

 tems of thought; nor is it difficult to 

 see in what way it acts and must in- 

 creasingly act in future to discredit or 

 to conserve such systems. The old 

 schemes of speculation and schools of 

 philosophy ran their transient course 

 under the influence of great teachers, 

 and then declined and gave place to 

 others, because they had no basis in 

 any real knowledge of Nature. In met- 

 aphysics and religion, the two great 

 spheres of mental activity, imagina- 

 tion went riot for lack of restraining 

 data. They had no element that could 

 give them permanent value; one man's 

 opinion was as good as another's, and 

 systems multiplied with the common 

 and inevitable character of instability. 

 Some were preserved by favoring acci- 

 dents. The system of Plato, as intrin- 



