THE CUBA REVIEW 17 



clergy, a few schools had been established. That advances in Havana occurred, however, 

 was demonstrated by the second census taken by the Society in the city, showing seventy- 

 one schools to be in existence with 2,000 pupils, most of these, however, being uncontrolled 

 by the Government and taught without regularization by ignorant colored women. The 

 attempt on the part of the Society to have these schools reformed and provided with 

 proper teachers was without result until 1816, when the Section of Education was 

 formed and a grant of $32,000 for primary instruction was received from the Government, 

 resulting in some improvements. The funds, however, notwithstanding individual contri- 

 butions, were insufficient. 



The Society by no means limited its endeavors to the improvement of primary 

 instruction, secondary and superior education also feeling its activities. The foundation 

 of a chair of chemistry was sought, the proposition being put forward in 1793, a subscrip- 

 tion of $24,615 being raised, but the chair was not filled until 1819, previous to which 

 the apparatus required had been brought from Europe and installed in the Hospital of 

 San Ambrosio, where quarters for a laboratory were obtained. In 1794 the Society drew 

 up a plan of secondary instruction, remarkably modern in its nature, including as it did 

 mathematics, drawing, physics, chemistry, natural history, botany and anatomy. The 

 course in the latter was opened in 1797. The old order of things was further changed 

 by the lectures on logic of Caballero, delivered at the San Carlos Seminary, founded in 

 1773, in which modern thought substituted the old Aristotelian philosophy; and in 1811 

 the old system received its final blow when Felix Varela took the chair of philosophy 

 and gradually made the names of modern thinkers and their doctrines familiar to the 

 students. Among his pupils was Don Jose de la Luz, remembered with gratitude by all 

 Cuba on account of his activities as an educator. The same spirit of advance was shown 

 also by a change in the law course of the university to the fuller study of Spanish law 

 as distinct from the former limitation to the study of Roman law. At this period, 

 however, there was no chair of surgery, while chemistry and philosophy were twenty 

 years behind the times. 



In the second period of this new epoch, between 1820 and 1842, the Sociedad 

 Economica began to receive the beneficial assistance of the younger men who had profited 

 by the facilities already existing. This resulted in 1830 in the formation within the Society 

 of a committee on history and another on literature. The Society was at this period being 

 attacked and hindered in its work by General Tacon, who put forth every endeavor to 

 suppress the new political and economic views, largely because of articles appearing in 

 the journals published under the auspices of the society. Nevertheless, by royal order 

 the committee on literature constituted itself an independent academy, which encouraged 

 or founded literary periodicals and whose sessions were attended by all leading men in 

 Cuba interested in letters and new ideas. 



The political changes in Spain following 1820 were of assistance to the Sociedad 

 Economica, the Spanish Government giving to the Society for the establishment of a 

 normal school the chapel of one of the Augustine orders, also establishing a chair of 

 constitutional law in the San Carlos Seminary and in the university. These advances, 

 however, were soon destroyed by another political change in 1824, and the injury thus 

 received was increased by the withdrawal of the $32,000 which had been received yearly 

 from the municipality for elementary education, and by a further withdrawal by royal 

 order of February 8, 1825, of all other funds allotted to it, thus rendering it impossible 

 longer to maintain the new free schools. 



During this period a great advance was made in the private schools existing in Cuba, 

 the distinction between elementary and superior instruction being drawn. Between 182 7 

 and 1830 five new colleges were established, the instruction in which was so good that 

 it was reported that there was now no longer any need to send young men abroad for 

 their education. Free preliminary instruction, however, outside of Havana and Matanzas 

 was in an exceedingly backward state. In 1833 the census showed only 9,082 pupils 

 registered in the schools of the whole Island, this figure, of course, being far greater 

 than those in actual attendance, and comparing very poorly with the total population 



