EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN CIVIL- 

 IZATION.* 



Our civilization is the result of education. The -wqrld's 

 intellectual progress, like other phases of evolution, has 

 encountered many obstacles, met with vexatious delays, 

 made unexpected and astonishing strides forward. It has 

 sought at one time to deify the body, and at another to 

 sacrifice the body to the soul. It has been injured by its 

 friends, aided by its foes, led men into the basest bondage 

 as well as into the broadest freedom, and still forms the 

 subject of bitter if bloodless controversy. 



Man was educated before books were thought of, and his 

 development would have continued if a school-house had 

 never been built. The stone that cut, the water that wet, 

 the hunger which drove him to slay wild beasts, and the 

 cold which led him to wrap himself in their skins, all 

 were in turn his teachers, suggesting to him new relations 

 and combinations, leading him to draw his crude inferences 

 and make his ckxmsy experiments. It is painful and little 

 profitable to follow the slow gropings of the human race 

 in its efforts to reach intellectual light. These struggles 

 are pathetically written for us in the habitations and imple- 

 ments left upon earth by primitive man. It is evident that 

 from the time he began to think he has striven to think 

 more clearly and to definite ends, growing gradually into 

 a realization of the fact that it was possible to set in order 

 the results of his experiments, to preserve and classify the 

 methods by which certain desirable ends had been attained, 

 in order that the experience of the mass might be made to 

 benefit the individual. So came the teacher and the school, 

 to supplement the work of Nature ; but it has only lately 

 been decided that the philosophical method in edu.cation is 

 superior to xmaided natural instinct. 



Egypt, the cradle of the sciences, boasted of arts and 

 learning while Greece was in a state of barbarism ; in fact, 



* Copyright, 1890, l)y James H. West. 



