Science- Teaching in the Schools. 767 
required of aman. The practical theory is that the object of educa- 
cation is to furnish the necessary information for the guidance of 
one’s conduct in all probable circumstances. Of late it has been 
recognized that these views are not mutually exclusive, and that a 
true theory of education must combine the two. The shield is both 
gold and silver. A right education must be both disciplinary and 
practical. 
But this harmonizing of the once hostile theories has not 
been effected without important modifications of each. On the 
one hand, the advocates of the disciplinary theory have come to 
recognize the truth that mental discipline can be obtained not merely 
from the study of some two or three subjects, but from the study 
of almost any subject. It is coming to be admitted that, from the 
disciplinary standpoint, the important question is not what we study, 
but dow we study. The very same mental faculties may be disci- 
plined, and disciplined in ways remarkably similar, in dealing with 
the most widely different subjects. The reasoning by which the 
comparative philologist traces the evolution of languages is strik- 
ingly analogous to that by which the comparative anatomist'traces 
the evolution of organic structures. On the other hand, the advo- 
cates of the practical theory have been compelled to a broader® 
and higher view of utility than the merely bread-and-butter view. 
The individual man is at once body and soul; and he comes into 
relations with the material universe, with his fellow-men, and with 
that unseen Power wherein nature and man alike live and move 
and have their being. Whatever may be known or believed with 
reasonable probability in regard to the human body, and in regard 
to the laws of that material universe with which it is related,—in 
regard to the human mind, whether as self-revealed in conscious- 
ness, or as indirectly manifested in literature and history—in regard 
to the Creator, whether made known by the facts of nature, or by 
a historic revelation—all this aggregate of varied knowledge and 
belief is in the highest and best sense practical, for it all tends to 
guide the conduct of life. 
The claim of any particular branch of study to a more or less 
prominent position in the curriculum of the schools must accord- 
ingly be tried by a twofold criterion—its power to afford an effect- 
ive mental discipline, and the practical utility of the information 
which it conveys, 
