September 3, 1908] 



NA TURE 



411 



when the great body of Englishmen had as strong 

 a sense as had their contemporary Germans of the 

 propriety of some form of general State control over 

 educational matters. Protector Somerset had it as 

 strongly as Duke Christopher of Wiirttemberg, Mul- 

 caster as Melanchthon, Milton (when at last he 

 grappled with the political aspects of the question) as 

 Comenius, Archbishop Sheldon as the Great Elector. 

 But at that point the parallel stops. In Germany 

 thenceforth the idea of education as a function of 

 Government waxes stronger; in England it is pushed 

 into the background, only to come seriously to the 

 front again in the Socialist movement led by Robert 

 Owen in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. 

 What is the cause of this divergence? The roots of 

 the matter lie deep in the religious and political for- 

 tunes of the two countries. But the proximate cause 

 of the difference mav perhaps be found in the fact 

 that the idea of the autocratic State (benevolent, edu- 

 cational, directive) found a congenial home in the 

 German kingdoms, but in England an unfertile 

 soil. 



The other point which strikes the reader of Dr. 

 Paulsen's masterly little book is that Germany is apt 

 to give over-zealous adhesion to some idea or set of 

 ideas which may be intellectually or politically fashion- 

 able at a given period, and then at a later time to 

 change its mood and discard its old theory with a 

 somewhat unrestrained contempt. Both for good and 

 for evil, German educational development is scarred 

 with deeper rifts than the English. Our growth has 

 been more continuous but less enthusiastic; we have 

 been readier to blend old-fashioned things with new ; 

 we have been less often carried off our feet by some 

 favourite idea. 



Now, as we look upon German education as a 

 whole from our different standpoint, with respect and 

 gratitude for all that German thought, German 

 idealism, and German laboriousness have done for 

 us, two features stand out in it as being of cardinal 

 importance. The first is the influence exerted upon 

 education, even upon some parts of university educa- 

 tion, by the bureaucratically organised State. But is 

 it, after all, a good thing to make a youth's future 

 prospects of professional advancement depend so 

 closely upon his performing the prescribed tasks of 

 a prolonged school education, which is necessaril)' 

 somewhat bookish and (in spite of all Matthew 

 Arnold's too easy assurances) examination-clouded? 

 The other point is that a belief in the supreme value 

 of a "circle of ideas," built up in a boy's mind by 

 the skilful hand of a schoolmaster, is much more 

 deep-seated in Germany than in England. Education 

 to them, far more than to us, means a highly trained 

 and often eloquent teacher directing from his desk 

 the aspirations and intelligence of rows of diligent 

 and well-disciplined youths sitting before him, each 

 with his neat satchel of books. Let us confess our 

 fault. We have too faint an idea of personal obliga- 

 tion to the organised State. We have too little con- 

 ception of the power of ideas. But does not the elab- 

 orately organised educational system of Germany tend 

 to exalt too highly the prestige of the official and 



NO. 2027, VOL. 7SJ 



bureaucratic State? And does it not entrench in forti- 

 fications of vested interest a bookish and over-intel- 

 lectualised kind of education, against the claims of 

 which brilliant but not yet effective protest is made 

 by Prof. Dewey in America and by Prof. Armstrong 

 among ourselves? 



M. E. Sadler. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Industrial Electrical Measuring Instruments 



Bv 



Kenelm Edgcumbe. Pp. xiv + 227. (London: A. 



Constable and Co., Ltd., iqo8.) Price 8^. net. 

 .'\i.THOUGH, as the author points out in the preface, 

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Every possible type of electrical measuring instru- 

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Although relays, synchronisers and lightning ar- 

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A good section is that dealing with resistance 

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The last section, dealing with Prof. Fleming's 

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The book is clearly printed, and well illustrated by 

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 hopes to deal with this in another work. 



L. c. 



