EDITOR'S TABLE, 



703 



of those who propose to obtain a so- 

 called liberal education. The alleged 

 concessions to the spirit of progress 

 are therefore illusive. The concessions 

 made to science after entrance into col- 

 lege are not allowed in the period of ear- 

 ly study when they would be far more 

 valuable. Nothing substantial is con- 

 ceded to science when our colleges keep 

 their classical standards of admission 

 so high that all the time of pupils is 

 consumed in Latin and Greek prepara- 

 tion. No concession is made to science 

 when proficiency in scientific studies 

 gained at school is not allowed to count 

 in entering college. No such concession 

 is made by a collegiate system that does 

 not provide by imperative requirement 

 for some thorough grounding in scien- 

 tific branches in the preliminary schools, 

 and which does not allow solid profi- 

 ciency of scientific attainment to open 

 the way to the highest college honors. 



But the radical antagonism of our 

 colleges to educational progress through 

 their reactive influence upon the lower 

 school system is only to be fully appre- 

 ciated when we understand in what 

 that progress consists. In its philoso- 

 phy, traditional education is very much 

 where it was a hundred years ago, but 

 it is undeniable that many important 

 principles have been reached which are 

 of the greatest moment as guides to 

 better educational practice. A century 

 of science is not to go for nothing in 

 the treatment of this subject. There 

 are relations among the great divisions 

 of modern knowledge which are fun- 

 damental in laying down courses of 

 study. There is an order in the devel- 

 opment of the human faculties which 

 is fundamental to the art of rational 

 and successful teaching. There is an 

 ideal of the highest purpose In cultivat- 

 ing the intellect — the investigation of 

 the truth of nature by various processes 

 — which has been developed by the ad- 

 vance of science. Systematic and com- 

 prehensive efforts have been made to 

 reduce this new ideal to practice in 



the lower sphere of education. Eflforta 

 have been made to teach first the things 

 which belong first in the course of 

 mental unfolding, to bring the young 

 mind into closer relations with the 

 facts of experience, to cultivate more 

 thoroughly the all-important habit of 

 observation, and to provide for the 

 training of the active and inventive 

 powers by simplified experiment and 

 various manipulations, and finally to 

 make the operations of study exercises 

 in investigation and in original and in- 

 dependent thought upon subjects with- 

 in the common sphere of intelligence, 

 and adapted to educate the judgment. 

 It is no longer a question that these 

 supreme objects can be secured to very 

 considerable degree by proper methods 

 of dealing with the minds of youth, 

 and great progress has been made in 

 recent times in working out the prac- 

 tical methods by which they are at- 

 tained. But the whole movement be- 

 longs to the lower schools, and the 

 whole influence of our college system 

 upon those schools is not to help but 

 to hinder it. In illustration and con- 

 firmation of this view, we quote some 

 remarks made by Dr. Barnard, Presi- 

 dent of Columbia College, at the dinner 

 given in New York to Professor Tyn- 

 dall in 1873 : 



I say, then, that our loog-established and 

 time-honored system of liberal education — 

 and when I speak of the system, I mean the 

 whole system, embracing not only the col- 

 leges, but the tributary schools of lower grade 

 as well — does not tend to form original in- 

 vestigators of Nature's truths ; and the reason 

 that it does not is, that it inverts the natural 

 order of proceeding in the business of mental 

 culture, and fails to stimulate in season the 

 powers of observation. And when I say this, 

 I must not be chai^ged with treason to my 

 craft — at least not with treason spoken for 

 the first time here, for I have uttered the same 

 sentiment more than once before in the sol- 

 emn assemblies of the craft itaclf. 



I suppose, Mr. President, at a very early 

 period of your life you may have devoted, 

 like so many other juvenile citizens, a portion 

 of your otherwise unemployed time to erperi- 

 ments in horticulture. In planting Icgumi- 



