THE 602nd ordinary MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER. ON MONDAY, JUNE I7th, 1918, at 4.30 p.m. 



The Right Hon. Lord Halsbury, F.R.S. (President), 

 IN THE Chair. 



The Secretary read the Minutes of the previous Meeting, and the 

 same were confirmed and signed. 



Hs also announced the election of Mr. F. J. Lias as a Life Associate. 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION: A SURVEY OF 

 RECENT EDUCATIONAL THEORY. By D. S. 

 Margoliouth, D.Litt., F.B.A. (Chairman of Council of 

 Cherwell Hall Training College, and Milham Ford Secondary 

 School). 



" TjIDUCATION, a great thing, a very great thing ! I never 

 st-J had any,^' — these words are put by Dickens in the mouth 

 of a man who, starting with nothing, had become not only a 

 successful merchant, but besides a pattern of all the virtues. 

 And indeed one who endeavoured to learn human nature from the 

 tales of this novelist would gather that the wild human plant 

 produces more fragrant flowers and more wholesome fruit than 

 that which is nurtured in a conservatory ; the former in his 

 romances is apt to display not only astuteness and self-reliance, 

 but serenity of temper, fidelity and self-sacrifice ; the latter 

 resembles a derelict, incapable of maintaining a course, and 

 a dang'er to navigation until it is submerged. In spite of this 

 experience — for we must suppose his fictions to be based on 

 observation of actual occurrences — Dickens recommended com- 

 pulsory education as a panacea for crime ; though his eminent 

 contemporary Alison, whose History of Europe is a sermon in 

 eighteen volumes against democracy, pointed to the fact that in 

 Prussia no less than twelve times as many crimes were committed 



