L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 205 



tions which imply such exact and profitable treatment of a subject as 

 should come from full knowledge. Educational science signifies, how- 

 ever, much more than methods of teaching or the theory of the curri- 

 culum. It involves conditions of physical, mental, and moral health, 

 with their manifold types and variations, and the determination of the 

 most appropriate, and therefore most effective, factors of growth at 

 every stage of development. In its present stage educational science must 

 be largely empirical, but in this respect it does not differ from meteor- 

 ology, for example; and the laws which govern the pei-petually varying 

 contents and conditions of a child's mind are not much less precisely 

 known or applied than those by which atmospheric changes are deter- 

 mined. The essential attribute of all scientific investigation is the spirit 

 of discovery, and the standards by which the results are judged are not 

 necessarily those of practical application. Teachers too often forget this 

 when contributions to knowledge of mental processes are brought before 

 them. Like engineers and medical practitioners, they expect science 

 to provide things which are directly useful, whereas their duty is to 

 discover possibilities in results achieved. Their own work is practical 

 or clinical, and as such may help to test structures or prescriptions, but 

 teaching is an art rather than a science, though like all arts its advances 

 are most secure when they are founded upon scientific principles. 



It is not necessary, however, to discuss whether research in educa- 

 tion belongs to pure or to applied science, whether, to use the distinction 

 now adopted in other departments of progressive knowledge, it is scien- 

 tific or industrial. It is scientific in so far as it follows scientific 

 methods, reveals new facts, arrives at clear conclusions, and suggests 

 consequences which are afterwards confirmed in application. Fortu- 

 nately, it is possible to do these things without possessing complete 

 knowledge. Hipparchus was able to determine the periods of revolu- 

 tions of the planets with remarkable accuracy, and his values differ very 

 sHghtly from those accepted at the present day, but it was not until 

 eighteen hundred years later that Newton discovered the law of gravita- 

 tion by which the movements of these and other bodies in the solar 

 system are governed. So Plato and Aristotle had conceptions of educa- 

 tion and the theory of conduct which are as true to-day as when they 

 were expounded, because, though the conditions are different, the funda- 

 mental human qualities which it is desired to stimulate and make 

 permanent for life are the same. 



While, however, we very willingly pay tribute to the wisdom of the 

 intellectual giants of the past, we should not let it control present 

 thought or future policy. The scheme of education outlined by Plato 

 in his ' Republic ' was designed for the training of gentlemen of means 

 and leisure, and it left out of account altogether everything of the 

 nature of manual occupation or professional equipment. It was a class 

 education adapted to the needs and circumstances of the time, and its 

 interest to us is chiefly academic or historic. Plato and other Greek 

 thinkers were mostly concerned with education as a moral or civic pro- 

 cess throughout life, and the school was only one stage affecting con- 

 tinuous development. It was believed that to apprehend scientific 

 principles and laws, or appreciate philosophic reasoning, required mature 



