54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



hastily draw the inference that the mere acquisition of a similar store 

 will bring out identical mental traits in other individuals irrespective 

 of their mental capacity. This point of view has unfortunately given 

 rise to an excessive faith in the special potency of certain kinds of 

 knowledge, and has engendered a sentimental belief in the educational 

 value of first one and then another subject. As a matter of fact, 

 experiences teach us there is only one kind of knowledge and one way 

 of acquiring it. The general tendency of educators to prescribe defi- 

 nite mental tasks in order to increase the efficiency of an organ whose 

 functions they have never seriously studied is analogous to the practise 

 of the physicians of the old school with their inordinate faith in the 

 specific power of a large number of drugs to cure diseases. There is 

 no reason for supposing that a professor of Greek or chemistry should 

 be more capable of estimating the capacity of an individual student's 

 brain than there was for the barbers in the reign of Henry the Eighth 

 assuming that they possessed sufficient knowledge of the anatomy of 

 the human body to entitle them to perform the duties of general 

 surgeons. 



No matter how much intelligent persons may differ in their expres- 

 sions of belief as to the relative merits of educational systems, there is 

 a general agreement as to the nature of the distinctive differences 

 between past and present systems; the former laying stress upon the 

 character of the information gained, the latter emphasizing the impor- 

 tance of the mental habits acquired. The results aimed at by modern 

 education have been well defined by Ex-President Eliot as " an initia- 

 tion of mental processes and the establishment of good mental habits, 

 with incidental acquisition of information"; and according to Presi- 

 dent Lowell " the essence of a liberal education consists in an attitude 

 of mind." From this it may be seen that the importance of good 

 mental habits or, if we choose to express the same idea physiologically, 

 of a well-balanced brain is an essential factor in the pursuit of culture ; 

 for although we may get to know the best which has been thought and 

 said in the world, we must still have the power " to turn a stream of 

 fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits." If we start 

 out from this physiological point of departure the absurdity and irrel- 

 evancy of much of the talk at the present time as to what should and 

 should not be taught in the universities is apparent. When an indi- 

 vidual has acquired bad habits of eating, bolts his food and develops 

 sjnnptoms of acute indigestion, he is not generally advised to eat more, 

 but is told to learn how to chew and to eat less. Most of the boys who 

 enter the universities have suffered from one or more attacks of mental 

 dyspepsia ; through no fault of their own they have acquired bad mental 

 habits, and nature has made an attempt to readjust their mental bal- 

 ance by giving them a distaste for more food. But, in order to sell the 



