LXVIII THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and was often written as a kind of literary exercise, or to set forth party 

 views or to support this or that system of thought. The accurate and 

 impartial narration of events was a secondary matter. The third or 

 Scientific stage, upon which History is supposed to have entered half a 

 century ago or more, is the stage of careful and minute investigation, 

 conducted on lines suggested by experience and designed to secure the 

 maximum of accuracy and the best possible presentation of the subject 

 in hand. 



But if history has entered on its final and scientific stage, all minds 

 in the community have not entered on that stage, and of course, the minds 

 of the young have not entered on it. A vigorous onslaught was made by 

 one of our university professors not long ago on the historical teaching 

 given in the public schools, and especially on the text books. These, he 

 went so far as to ascribe to a very sinister spiritual parentage. To the 

 ears polite of this audience I shall not venture to name the party he 

 made responsible for them. If the Professor was correctly reported, 

 he said that "nothing so perplexed him as to know how to deal with the 

 students who came to him, who were actually hindered by what they 

 had learned in that branch." It follows that it would be better 

 not to teach history at all in the schools than to teach it by present 

 methods and with the present text-books. But if the methods of teach- 

 ing in this particular subject are so bad, and the text-books of 

 so shocking a character, what is the reason? Is anything wrong with 

 the subject? Rousseau, many of whose views on education were sound 

 enough, said that he had learnt history too soon, and that it had given 

 him false ideas. He recommended that the teaching of it should be 

 deferred till the pupil was fifteen years of age. But fifteen years of age 

 in Rousseau's time would mean seventeen or eighteen in our day, so 

 greatly has the period of childhood been extended. It may be that 

 children are learning too young the kind of history that is presented to 

 them. It may be that greatly abbreviated history is either falsified his- 

 tory or unintelligible history. I almost think one might venture to say 

 that, the more history is abbreviated, the more knowledge of history it 

 requires to make head or tail of it. 



In which of its three stages, the Rudimentary, the Literary or the 

 Scientific, may we say that history is most suited to youthful minds? In 

 the first, it can hardly be doubted, though in the second it may also have 

 some attractions and impart some benefit. Boys love to hear or read 

 of battles and of victories won by their own side, if they have a side; 

 and it is a bad sign if they have not. Some modern instructors would 

 tell them, "You should'nt be so much interested in battles. Battles 

 belong to a barbarous age; you should be interested in social progress, 

 the development of political liberty, the advancement of the arts and 



