THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM. 9 



should be aristocratic or democratic, are subordinate 

 questions in comparison with the supreme question : 

 Shall the modern civilised State be ecclesiastical or 

 secular ? Shall it be theocratic — ruled by the irra- 

 tional formulae of faith and by clerical despotism — or 

 nomocratic — under the sovereignty of rational laws 

 and civic right? The first task is to kindle a 

 rational interest in our youth, and to uplift our 

 citizens and free them from superstition. That 

 can only be achieved by a timely reform of our 

 schools. 



Our education of the young is no more in harmony 

 with modern scientific progress than our legal and 

 political world. Physical science, which is so much 

 more important than all other sciences, and which, 

 properly understood, really embraces the so-called 

 moral sciences, is still regarded as a mere accessory 

 in our schools, if not treated as the Cinderella of the 

 curriculum. Most of our teachers still give the most 

 prominent place to that dead learning which has come 

 down from the cloistral schools of the Middle Ages. 

 In the front rank we have grammatical gymnastics 

 and an immense waste of time over a '"thorough 

 knowledge " of classics and of the history of foreign 

 nations. Ethics, the most important object of 

 practical philosoplry, is entirely neglected, and its 

 place is usurped by the ecclesiastical creed. Faith 

 must take precedence over knowledge — not the 

 scientific faith which leads to a monistic religion, 

 but the irrational superstition that lays the founda- 

 tion of a perverted Christianity. The valuable 

 teaching of modern cosmology and anthropology, 

 of biology and evolution, is most inadequately 

 imparted if not entirely unknown, in our higher 



