Januabt 21, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



47 



closed, when it was announced that Dr. Wald- 

 eteinj who delivered a lecture a fortnight ago on 

 scientific methods in archeology, was to give a 

 course next March ; and now Prof. A. L. Froth- 

 ingham, recently of Johns Hopkins and now of 

 Princeton, is delivering a series of five lectures on 

 Assyrian archeology. While so much activity has 

 thus been shown in the different fields of classical 

 archeology, prehistoric archeology has been more 

 fully recognized in the appointment last week of 

 Mr. F. W. Putnam, the curator of the Peabody 

 museum, well known for his careful researches in 

 American mounds and other remains, to the Pea- 

 body professorship of American archeology and 

 ethnology. 



Professok Calderwood's short paper in the 

 New Princeton review, on the present status of 

 philosophy in Britain, is exceedingly clear and 

 satisfactory. And, coming from a man who has 

 taken so active a part in the philosophical con- 

 troversies of the last quarter of a century, it is 

 rather surprisingly judicial in tone. Professor 

 Calderwood starts with Hume, and briefly shows 

 the course the reaction against him has taken in 

 Great Britain, France, and Germany. He outlines 

 the rise of the experiential philosophy in Great 

 Britain, and indicates its present points of weak- 

 ness. He also shows why Kant and Hegel have 

 found so large a following among English stu- 

 dents of philosophy, but claims that in Great 

 Britain, as in Germany, Hegelianism has lost its 

 grip, and that there is a marked return to Kant 

 for the purposes of further exposition and criti- 

 cism. The outlook for the future, Professor Calder- 

 wood views optimistically. We are to be tied 

 down neither to bare experientialism nor to unin- 

 telligible rationalism. The British philosophy is to 

 draw what is best and truest from both schools in 

 the formulation of a philosophy of certainty. 

 " The thought of the nation is in a transition 

 stage, preparing for a new advance ; and, when 

 this comes, it promises to be the fruit of all that 

 is best in German and British thought, and in its 

 nature a further clear advance toward a philoso- 

 phy of human knowledge, — a philosophy of 

 certainty." 



by the appointment of persons without any ex- 

 perience in teaching or training for it, and very 

 many of whom haee no intention of teaching 

 permanently. This is a great evil, and, as things 

 are at present, cannot be adequately corrected, 

 though mitigation seems possible. The proper 

 remedy would be to hold in reserve a certain num- 

 ber of persons of normal-school training, who 

 could be at once appointed to such vacancies as 

 they might occur. The objection to this plan 

 would be the expense attendant upon it, and the 

 uncertainty as to just how many vacancies would 

 occur annually. The expense would be some- 

 thing, to be sure ; but it would be the cheapest way 

 of saving thousands of school-children of tender 

 age from the disturbing influence of ' quack ' 

 teachers. And a table of statistics kept for a 

 few years would give an average annual number 

 of vacancies that would be sufficiently accurate 

 for all practical purposes. Even at some expense 

 and trouble, this evil of foisting unfit and un- 

 trained teachers upon the schools should be speed- 

 ily done away with. 



In his annual report to the New York state 

 legislature. Superintendent Draper states that be- 

 tween three and four thousand public-school 

 teachers drop out every year, and that the large 

 majority of the vacancies thus created are filled 



One chapter in Professor Payne's ' Contribu- 

 tions to the science of education,' which we no- 

 tice in another column, has excited a great deal 

 of angry criticism in some of the school-journals. 

 That chapter is the one In which Professor Payne 

 pays his compliments to the maxim, 'Proceed 

 from the known to the unknown,' and denomi- 

 nates it a piece of educational cant which is ac- 

 cepted because it saves the trouble of thinking. 

 Some of Professor Payne's critics have been firm 

 but mild, while others have worked themselves 

 into a great state of excitement, and have saluted 

 his chapter as a voice from mediaeval darkness, 

 and classed him as a pedagogical and psychologi- 

 cal ignoramus. We are disposed to think that 

 Professor Payne is partially right, but, on the 

 whole, wrong. His contention that definitude is 

 a late and not an early step in the elaboration of 

 knowledge is well founded, but it does not logi- 

 cally follow that on that account progress is from 

 the unknown to the known. If it were so, we 

 should have no starting-point. The process of ac- 

 quiring knowledge would be the addition of an 

 indefinite number of zeros. Instruction must 

 arouse some answering chord in the pupil's mind, 

 and, so far at least, the subject of the instruction 

 must be known, and not unknown. But that this 

 fact wiU not bear all the interpretations so often 

 put upon it, is also true. In any event, Professor 



