S.50 



NATURE 



\Oct. 9, 1879 



favourite schools, and to the unfortunate associations 

 which have happened to cluster round that word. But 

 Combe was an earnestly religious man, and in his view 

 both natural and revealed religion were vital parts of 

 education. He wished, it is true, to exclude controversial 

 theology from the common school ; but he strongly advo- 

 cated the teaching of the Christian faith by clergy and 

 parents at other than school hours. And in the school 

 itself he thought that moral training — the cultivation of 

 benevolence, reverence, and truthfulness — was indis- 

 pensable. There is no one point on which his theories 

 have been so much misunderstood. He believed that 

 very noble incentives to duty and valuable helps in the 

 formation of character were to be obtained from the 

 wise study of the laws of our own being, and the structure 

 of human society ; and his chapter on " Moral and 

 Religious Training through Science"— one of the most 

 original and valuable in the book — is full of wise sug- 

 gestions and of interesting examples. " The Ten Com- 

 mandments," he would say, "are as clearly inscribed in 

 the nature and constitution of man as on the tables of 

 stone delivered to Moses." To him the revelations of 

 Divine will and of the nature of human responsibility 

 conveyed to us in science and in the order of nature were 

 as sacred as the teachings of religion, were indeed a 

 substantial part of religion itself. It must be owned that 

 this is a doctrine which has not met with universal 

 acceptance, and the exposition of which in Combe's 

 writings is yet deserving of study. And in like manner 

 his views on the training of children for the duties of 

 citizenship, on a more rational system of teaching for girls, 

 and on the necessity for instructing the teachers of the 

 people in the art and mystery of their profession, were 

 generally right and often profound ; and possess hardly 

 less value for this generation than for his own. 



Yet it must be admitted that although Combe saw 

 clearly and expounded forcibly some useful truths, he 

 was not distinguished by much breadth of vision ; and 

 he certainly did not excogitate a full or philosophical 

 system of education. He believed it possible by pure 

 deduction to evolve a practical scheme from certain 

 scientific principles ; and there is evidence throughout 

 the whole of his writings that he attached too little value 

 to the lessons of actual experience, and that a fuller 

 knowledge of child-nature, and of the practical working 

 of schools would have rectified many of the deductions to 

 which he attached most importance. He habitually 

 depreciates the study of language, and repeatedly con- 

 trasts what he calls "real" knowledge with linguistic 

 study, to the disparagement of the latter. To him words 

 were mere means of expression and of communication. 

 He never recognised the truth that words are the instru- 

 ments as well as the representatives of thought ; and that 

 the right study of words and their relations is a discipline 

 in logic and one of the most eflfective means of widening 

 the range of a pupil's intelligence. Nor in his scheme of 

 study was there much room left for history, for poetry, or 

 for literary culture in any form. " Res, non verba, quceso" 

 was his favourite motto ; yet it is not too much to say that 

 his conception both of things and of words and of the part 

 they should play in education was inadequate and un- 

 sound. And as to his system of phrenology, which he had 

 learned from Spurzheim, and from which he hoped so 



much as an instrument for the regeneration of society, we 

 must admit that it is now universally discredited by men 

 of science ; and that it betrayed Combe into a false 

 method of psychological analysis. He believed that every 

 separate moral propensity or mental gift had its own 

 habitat in the brain, and was capable of being separately 

 handled and developed. He thought that it would be 

 enough to show a child that he was deficient, e.g., in the 

 organ of veneration, and then to set him to cultivate that 

 faculty by placing before him appropriate objects for its 

 exercise, and so to restore the balance of his character. 

 Experience however has not confirmed this theory. It 

 may well be doubted whether character has ever been 

 fashioned in this conscious and mechanical way. At all 

 events it does not appear even in this book, that the 

 theory has ever been seriously carried out in practice ; or 

 that any one even of Combe's most enthusiastic disciples 

 has accepted it as a working hypothesis, or applied it with 

 success in the government, either of a school or of a 

 home. There can be little doubt that Combe's faith in 

 what he called phrenological science and his constant use 

 of its terminology, vitiated many of his speculations about 

 teaching, and prevented him from arriving at a full or 

 satisfactory solution of the problem he desired to solve. 



Few persons are better qualified than the editor of this 

 volume to aid the public in discriminating what is 

 ephemeral and obsolete in Combe's teaching from that 

 which is likely to possess permanent value. This task, 

 however, Mr. Jolly has not achieved and has scarcely 

 attempted. And even those who most appreciate the im- 

 portance of Combe's contributions to educational science 

 will be fain to own that the bulk of this book is seriously 

 disproportioned to the worth of its contents ; and that a 

 more valuable boon to the teacher's profession, and a far 

 worthier and more enduring memorial of Combe himself 

 might easily have been comprised in a volume of one-third 

 of its size. 



THE CAPERCAILLIE IN SCOTLAND 

 The Capercaillie in Scotland. By J. A. Harvie-Brown, 

 F.Z.S., Member of the British Ornithologist's Union. 

 (Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1879.) 



THE introduction of birds into countries far from their 

 original homes and their successful "acclimatisa- 

 tion" therein — to use a word now generally in vogue — is 

 well known to have been accomplished in many instances 

 — not always, however, to lead to the benefits expected 

 to result from it. Thus the European house-sparrow 

 has been transplanted to the United States of America, 

 and is now a familiar bird of many of the great cities of 

 the New World ; the Indian grakle is at present one of 

 the commonest birds in Mauritius, and in some of the 

 Hawaiian Islands the native birds are said to have almost 

 entirely disappeared in the course of their struggles for 

 life with introduced species. But the r^-introduction of a 

 bird into a country where it has formerly flourished and 

 where it has only recently— almost within the memory of 

 man — become extinct, is, so far as we know, almost an 

 unparalleled fact, and one that is well worthy of an 

 accurate record. 



Such has been the case in our own islands with one of 

 the finest and largest species of game birds commonly 



