EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 



psychology, save that it seemed well to place them 

 near the sociological aspects of education, as re 

 garded from the stand-point of evolution. These 

 aspects are prominent enough to-day. In how 

 far Spencer s views on education as a civic ques 

 tion were determined by the individualism which 

 he consistently advocated, or were logically de 

 rived from the theory of evolution, I cannot here 

 attempt to say. But for present purposes we 

 may accept the able arguments of Professor Hud 

 son in favor of the view that Spencer s political 

 thinking is based upon sound deduction from the 

 evolutionary formula. 



It is a chief tenet of the Spencerian sociology 

 that the functions of the state should be far more 

 limited than we find them in most modern com 

 munities. In accordance with this idea, Spencer, 

 almost alone, persistently opposed state education 

 as vicious in principle. Recent events in Great 

 Britain seem to be justifying him. We have pro 

 ceeded from compulsory state education to free 

 education, and now the cry is for state feeding of 

 the children. Assuredly, no humane person will 

 allow any theory to interfere with the feeding of a 

 starving child. But the question arises whether 

 the supersession of the parent by the state is not 

 an inevitable outcome of modern tendencies, and 

 whether the state can survive the moral deterio 

 ration of its component units. If it be true that 

 the family is the cell of the body politic, what 

 consequences must follow upon cell-deterioration? 



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