482 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



undeniable ; while, that teachers often miserably fail to im- 

 prove their pupils, and then report the result of their own 

 incompetency as failures of nature, all may have seen, al- 

 though it is now proved that the lowest imbeciles are no 

 sunk beneath the possibility of elevation. 



The purpose of the foregoing remarks has been to 

 bring forward an aspect of man which cannot fail to have 

 an important influence upon processes of instruction. I 

 have endeavoured to illustrate the extent to which Nature 

 works out her own results in the organism of man. The 

 numerous instances of self-made men, who, with no ex- 

 ternal assistance, have risen to intellectual eminence, and 

 the still more marked instances where students have forced 

 their way to success in spite of the hindrances of an irra- 

 tional culture, testify to the power of the spontaneous and 

 self-determining tendencies of human character, while the 

 general overlooking of this fact has unquestionably led to 

 an enormous exaggeration of the potency of existing educa- 

 tional methods. In establishing this view, science both limits 

 and modifies the function of the instructor. It limits it by 

 showing that mental operations are corporeally conditioned, 

 that large regions of our nature are beyond direct control, 

 and that mental attainment depends in a great degree upon 

 inherited capacity and organic growth. It limits it by 

 showing that ancestral influences come down upon us as we 

 enter the world, like the hand of Fate ; that we are born 

 well, or born badly, and that whoever is ushered into exist- 

 ence at the bottom of the scale, can never rise to the top, 

 because the weight of the universe is upon him. It shows 

 how not to mistake the surface effects of an ostentatious 

 system for a thorough informing of character ; how not to 

 mistake the current smattering of languages, the cramming 

 for examinations, the glossing of accomplishments, the 

 showy and superficial pedantries of literature, and the 

 labelling of degrees, for true education. 



