4 W.- G. Langivorthy Taylor 



object the essential facts and laws of progress, while education 

 must recognize how persons of different epochs and at different 

 ages are able to apprehend them. 



Education assumes that the mind is immature, whatever may- 

 be true of the body. There is much truth in the observation that 

 the individual must in his early personal experiences pass through 

 the history of the race. He is the microcosm, and from nebulous 

 beginning must in a short time develop into a representative of 

 the most highly differentiated organism. When fully matured 

 he will be master of the methods of thought prevailing in the 

 epoch. In the course of his development, however, the methods 

 of earlier epochs are applicable. To the child, all phenomena 

 are present. There is but one reality — the present. He con- 

 ceives of everything he observes as eternally the same. His 

 method is arithmetical, logical, and static. To the man, the 

 world is an old story. Nothing surprises him. Wonders 

 have ceased. He amuses himself by watching the fleeting pan- 

 orama of life. His observations are of rate of progress and of 

 changes in rate. He notes recurrences of high and low speed. 

 His method is organic and kinetic ; his economics is "a calculus 

 of pleasure and of pain" 1 (Jevons). 



Now we avail ourselves of the distinction between science and 

 education. The professor in his study is analyzing the tenden- 

 cies of the times ; in the class room he is adapting his instruction 

 to minds of earlier epochs. A description, then, of present 

 methods of thought in the social sciences would be impossible 

 without the contrast afforded by former methods and without 

 noting the imperceptible transition from the old to the new — a 

 comparison which is to be made chiefly in the field of educational 

 method. Wliat was and is the static thought with which we are 

 to contrast the newer kinetic thought? It must have been, of 

 course, a statement of reality as apprehended by the past in- 

 vestigator and as imparted in the present class room. At this 

 point the doctrine of the harmonious development of different 

 social phases receives unexpected confirmation. That is only real 

 which is apprehended as such. Higher realities are only potential 



*If not of pleasure and pain, anyhow a calculus. 



