BY J. BROWNLIE HENDERSON. Vil. 
And it is just here that we can get the ideals of the 
jeaders of those natioas—by examining their method of 
preparing their young people for the business of life. The 
history of education is therefore a most fascinating study, 
revealing as it does how the leaders of the various nations 
that have come and gone across the centuries have looked 
at the future. 
It is interesting to just look over a few of these ancient 
methods of education. 
In India the Bra’:mans, since about 2000 B.C., have 
kept all education in their own hands. They were of pure 
Aryan blood and evidently introduced the caste system 
as a means of race preservation. They taught the young 
men (for females were never educated) sacred and heroic 
literature, poetry, rhetoric, grammar, law, medicine, theo- 
logy, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. Most of 
the teaching was oral, and even lately text books were 
written so as to be easily committed to memory. ‘The 
demand on the memory was very great indeed. The next 
two castes, the warriors and rulers, also could take the 
higher courses in the schools, but their training was much 
more on the lines of physical development. In 400 B.C. 
they had a comprehensive grammar of their own language, 
and their mathematics and astronomy were sufficient to 
enable them to calculate eclipses. The great mass of the 
people belonging to the lower castes were of course left in 
darkness—their education was illegal, as it is with the 
Javanese under Dutch rule at the present day. The Brah- 
mans, who held the power, looked forward to keeping that 
power in their own hands as a class, and therefore carefully 
educated that class and no other. But their system tended 
only to develop metaphysicians, and as a natural result 
deterioration soon set in, and all over India progress ceased. 
Much of our learning seems to have come from or through 
India: now the Western pupil has far outstripped the 
Eastern teacher. 
The Aryans who settled in Persia were much more 
energetic than those who settled in India. They had a 
system of state education, but as before it was reserved for 
the children of the noble. And reading and writing formed 
no part of the systematic course! Their training was 
