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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



MILL, EDUCATION, AND SCIENCE. 



THE first part of Mr. Mill's autobi- 

 ography gives an instructive ac- 

 count of his early education. He had 

 before propounded his general views 

 upon this subject in a celebrated ad- 

 dress delivered at the University of St. 

 Andrew's in 1867. Mr. Mill had won 

 the enviable distinction of possessing 

 " the most elaborated mind in Europe," 

 and this, together with the confessed 

 ability of his argument, gave it wide 

 influence with the public. But there 

 were many who thought that Mr. Mill, 

 on that occasion, reasoned too much 

 from his own exceptional experience, 

 and that, as an argument addressed to 

 the times, the performance was mis- 

 leading and injurious. The record of 

 Mr. Mill's mental history, now pub- 

 lished, throws important light upon 

 the view promulgated at St. Andrew's, 

 and, as the question involved is of great 

 practical importance, the present is a 

 fitting occasion to offer some remark 

 upon it. 



There has grown up a grave conflict 

 between ancient learning and modern 

 science as means of educating the hu- 

 man mind. It originated in the rise 

 of a new order of knowledge derived 

 from the extensive study of Nature in 

 recent times. The old system was, 

 however, strongly intrenched in the 

 field of education ; it was interwoven 

 with the world's literature, and all its 

 venerated traditions ; it appealed to the 

 generations of the great that it had 

 trained, and it was in possession of the 

 old institutions of learning, fortified by 

 rich endowments, and backed by state 

 and church. But, as modern knowl- 

 edge has grown in extent and influence, 

 and institutions have been liberalized, 

 and the idea of general education has 



become a part of civilization, there has 

 been a growing demand for the right 

 of science to have a more decisive 

 voice in education, and this demand has 

 been partially yielded to by the modifi- 

 cation of old methods and the establish- 

 ment of new. Such changes have only 

 resulted from long and earnest conflict 

 between opposing views, and, what- 

 ever may be the merits of this contro- 

 versy, one thing would seem to be cer- 

 tain, that it has been a natural and in- 

 evitable outgrowth of the progress of 

 events. 



At the outset of his address, Mr. 

 Mill recognized this struggle as "the 

 great controversy of the present day, 

 with regard to the higher education, 

 the difference which most broadly di- 

 vides educational reformers ; the vexed 

 question between the ancient languages 

 and the modern sciences and arts." 

 But, from Mr. Mill's point of view, the 

 antagonism is unreal, and the contro- 

 versy futile and groundless. Between 

 the two systems of culture he acknowl- 

 edged no rivalship, but said, " Why not 

 both?" To the obvious answer that 

 average students have neither capacity 

 nor time for such extensive mental con- 

 quests, he indignantly replied: "lam 

 amazed at the limited conception which 

 many educational reformers have 

 formed to themselves of a human be- 

 ing's power of acquisition." Mr. Mill, 

 accordingly, proceeded to outline a 

 system of study more consonant, as he 

 thought, with the powers and possibili- 

 ties of the human mind. The limita- 

 tions of capacity assigned by experi- 

 ence and embodied in practical plans 

 of education he gave to the winds, and 

 offered an ideal of scholarship and a 

 range of acquisition of most majestic 

 proportions. But it was so grandly 



