The great trouble caused by the old conception and method now is that principles are stated in universal form which in fact have only a limited application; and the danger from the new spirit is that possible hypotheses are sometimes set forth as axioms. Pedagogy must be submitted to the same crucial process of Aufklarung, in the light of all the facts that the correlative modern sciences are offering, to which all other forces of civilization are subjected. To this spirit and method the normal school must open its doors. It must become, to some extent, a work-shop of first-hand investigators, not a retail junk shop for the disposal of the catechisms of the Mahatmas who once lived on the Mountain, serenely contemplating the world and life as an unbroken plain, breathing an atmosphere of universality, and thinking in terms of reverberating definitions and ornamental classifications.-Atlantic Monthly, October.

BANDS OF MERCY IN SCHOOL.

Mc

ORE children can be reached through the schools than in any other way. The Superintendent of Schools and mem

Many teachers will gladly use "Black Beauty" as supplementary reading, and the children are sure to like it. It is recommended for that purpose by Dr. Wm. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education.

In connection with school work, it is suggested that the children should write compositions on the subject of kindness to animals and to human beings. With wise help from the teachers, much good may result from this exercise, and it will aid in keeping up the interest.

Good pictures of animals and flowers should be hung on the walls of school rooms. Those representing some kind action, such as giving food and water to hungry and thirsty animals, are especially suitable.

In order that Bands of Mercy may remain active after they are formed, some one whose heart is in the work should help and encourage the teachers by visiting the schools from time to time. Humane literature might also be given.-Humane Society Leaflet.

DOES GAIN OFFSET THE LOSS?

N

BY REV. J. S. KIEFFER.

interviewed, and their interest in the matter solicited and gained.

The opportunities of a teacher to educate in humanity are very great. It is a simple matter to form a Band of Mercy. The pledge is as follows: "I will try to be kind to all living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage." The children should sign the pledge, choose a name, and elect a president and secretary. It is well that the teacher should be president. It need take but a few minutes of each week for the scholars to repeat together the pledge. A time for exercises of a miscellaneous character, meant to be in part a recreation, is set apart in most schools. This time can occasionally be used for the Band of Mercy, and thus avoid hindrance to regular study.

One Band in a Rhode Island school appoints a committee to arrange the programme for each meeting with the teacher's assistance.

Reading lessons, etc., will give the interested teacher many opportunities for

ern University, June 13. 1893, by William Frederick Poole, LL. D., which has for its theme "The University Library and the University Curriculum," takes its start from the fact that the number of graduates from colleges and universities, when compared with the in crease of the population and wealth of the country, is diminishing, and the related circumstance that the age at which students enter college is steadily increasing. In 1840, the proportion of undergraduates to the population of the country was I to 1,549; in 1880, 1 to 3,000. The disparity is probably greater now. The average age of freshmen at Harvard on admission is now upwards of nineteen years; a circumstance which President Eliot regards with solicitude, saying, "At the beginning of this century, many students graduated at the age at which they now enter."

The author of this address, suspecting the tendency to be older than this century, made examination, with reference to this point, of the early classes at Har

vard, beginning with the first class of 1642. Selecting from the classes between that date and 1659, the seventeen men best known for the reputation they had achieved in life, and looking up their ages, he found that six of them had entered college at thirteen years of age, two at fourteen, six at fifteen, and three at sixteen. "It will be a mistake," he says, "to suppose that the scholastic requirements at Harvard were then low. I shall later state what those requirements were, and will now only remark that there was probably not one graduate at Harvard, in the last class of 1893, who could have passed the final examinations and taken the bachelor's degree in the class of 1642."

Dr. Poole agrees with President Eliot in considering it no good sign that the average age of entrance has been so greatly advanced; it does not signify more thorough training or better scholarship. "The most successful professional and literary men, as a rule, both in this country and in Europe, were the men who completed their college studies early in life. Colleges are now competing with each other in raising the average age of candidates for admission by increasing the technical conditions of entering, often in the form of grammatical puzzles and philological conundrums." The late age of entrance is due, not to a superior standard of scholarship, as compared with that of former times, but chiefly to the slow, postponing and wasteful methods of instructing young persons in the classics, the most fruitful and advantageous period of a child's life, as regards the acquisition of these languages, being allowed to run to waste.

How much may be accomplished with ease, at a very early age, in the way of acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin, is shown by the experience and testimony of John Stuart Mill, as given in his Autobiography. "I have no remembrance," says Mr. Mill, "of the time when I began to learn Greek. I have been told that it was when I was three years old. My earliest recollection on the subject is that of committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of common Greek words, which he wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, I learned no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs; but, alter a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation. I re

member going through Esop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. I read in 1813 [he was then seven years old] the first six dialogues of Plato." The other prose authors which he remembered to have read, up to the time he was eight years old, were the following: The whole of Herodotus, Xenophon's Cyropædia, the Memorabilia, some of the Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, and part of Lucian and Isocrates.

That this result was due to the method pursued, and not to superiority of natural endowment, Mr. Mill is very positive in affirming, declaring himself, in respect of natural quickness of apprehension, retentiveness of memory, activity and energy of character, to have been rather below than above par. The narrative of his education, he says, "may be useful in showing how much more than is commonly supposed may be taught, and well taught, in those early years which, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are little better than wasted." Later he adds: "The result of the experiment shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a strong light the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent in acquiring a modicum of Latin and Greek taught to school-boys, a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain the illjudged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from general education."

The same lesson is taught by the experience of the Mather family, a family whose members, "for four generations and for a hundred years, had no rivals in New England as men of influence and intellectual power. From 1643 to 1723, eight members of the family were graduates of Harvard College, and the average age at which they entered college was twelve years and ten months." Increase Mather taught his boys and girls Latin, Greek and Hebrew very much as James Mill taught his son. They learned these languages early, easily, naturally. When Cotton Mather entered Harvard College, at the age of eleven years and six months, he spoke Hebrew, Greek and Latin; had composed many Latin treatises; had read Cicero, Ovid, Virgil and Terence; had finished the Greek New Testament, and had read portions of Homer and Isocrates. "The mental activity of this family, so far as I know, has no counterpart in our day. More

than six hundred of their books were printed, and at a time when there were no publishers, and all books were issued by subscription. Their books are now eagerly sought for by libraries and collectors, in Europe as well as America, and, although they are dead books, in the sense that Greek and Latin are dead languages, their cost in the markets of the world exceeds that of the writings of any other five families which have ever lived in America. What is the explanation of this record? That they were men of unusual natural abilities cannot be questioned; but in my judgment, the explanation, in a large measure, is found in the fact that they were educated by methods of teaching now lost sight of, and in the early years of childhood which are now allowed to run to waste.'

It is surprising how small a part the grammar played in those early days. The grammars were very simple things, "wholly unlike the ponderous and perplexing manuals now put into the hands of modern students." They contained scarcely more than the inflexions of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The grammar almost universally used for twelve centuries was known as the "Donatus," from the name of its author, the teacher of St. Jerome. It was the first book which, in 1450, came from the press of John Gutenberg, and was so small a work as to cover only nine pages of ordinary type. The grammar which succeeded this one, and of which more than a thousand editions were published, was known as the "Corderius," from the name of its author, the teacher of John Calvin. Like its predecessor, the "Corderius" was a very brief and simple affair. It was on such apparently inadequate grammars as these that generations of great scholars were brought up.

The difference, in respect of grammars, between those days and the present time, is suggestive, and indicates one probable cause of the difference as regards results between the former and the present method. The aim seems formerly to have been to give to young persons, at as early a day as possible, a practical, working knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, equipping them, to begin with, only with so much knowledge of the gram. mar of them as was absolutely necessary for this purpose. They were first of all promptly introduced into that great world of life and literature which has had so

much to do with human culture, and being made as it were free citizens of that republic, were encouraged to make themselves, by extensive reading, more and more acquainted there. "Drill in the subjunctive of the essential part' was deferred until the pupil had a full vocabulary, and was familiar with the inflections and with the Roman plan of placing words in constructing a sentence. Syntax was then evolved from the language itself, and not taken from a grammar.

་

This difference between getting a knowledge of syntax by evolution from a knowledge of the language itself and getting it from a grammar of the language is the punctum saliens of the whole difference between the two methods. The former order, which seems to have been more natural and rational, has been in a measure reversed. Formerly," said Prof. Bowen, of Cambridge, "we studied grammar in order to read the classics, now a days the classics are studied as a means of learning grammar. Surely a more effective means could not have been invented of rendering the pupil insensible to the beauties of the ancient poets, orators and historians, of inspiring disgust alike with Homer and Virgil, Xenophon and Tacitus, by making their words mere pegs on which to hang long disquisitions on the latest refinements of philology." "Latin and Greek," says Prof. Gildersleeve, of Johns Hopkins University, are to be studied primarily for the knowledge of the life of the Roman and Greek people, as manifested in language and literature, and not because Latin and Greek are convenient vehicles for the communication of a certain amount of linguistic philosophy or comparative grammar. Such matters are entirely out of place in the early stages of study. The beginner has to do with results, not processes."

and tyranny of grammar. Browning's poem on "The Burial of a Grammarian' shows in a very striking manner what results it is capable of producing.

This address has been interesting to us for several reasons, but chiefly because of the testimony it bears to the truth which we have recently insisted upon in these columns, that any vital thing, whatsoever it may be, is eternally and unalterably superior to the philosophy of it. It serves to show that the substitution of the philosophy of a thing for the thing itself works as mischievously in matters educational as in matters religious. It is a strange delusion that leads to such substitution. What is first is first, and that

or think more about it. If, however, it can aid him, he wants just that much of it.

I am satisfied that he will find what he needs in the study of the mind of the child rather than of the adult; of its activity, rather than its anatomy; of the real rather than of an imaginary child; of life and books, rather than of either alone.

He will find the most help in studying the activity of the child's mind when it works naturally; under special training; at different periods.—American Teacher.

MORALITY IN NATURE.

ORALITY is embodied in nature.

of it. Get the thing itself, and then, in due time, you shall have the philosophy of it also; or, if not, you shall have the satisfaction, at least, of possessing the thing itself; the philosophy of it you can possibly, upon necessity, afford to do without. But to seek to get the thing by getting the philosophy of it, that is a bad way-my friend, try it not. Neither the thing itself nor its philosophy can you satisfactorily compass in that manner.Reformed Church Messenger.

WHY STUDY PSYCHOLOGY?

'HERE is no occasion for the every

THER

day teacher to worry because he is not a psychologist. There is much psychology that he might as well not know. He should not study for the sake of saying that he knew it, to appear learned, to show that he is professionally well read, nor yet that he may pass an examination.

He needs no more psychology than will help him to teach better. It is not that he may teach more scholastically; that he may better imitate Dr. A, Professor B, or Major C; not that his class may get higher marks in arithmetic, geography, grammar, spelling, music, or even in temperance physiology; but rather that he may so manage and teach the school that the pupils will learn in the best possible way to know, to think, to do, and to be the best they can.

The best knowing, thinking, doing, and being is the aim of the school, and if the teacher can secure these in the best way without a knowledge of psychology, then there is no occasion for him to read

received from things. Whenever children are taught to use their own faculties, powers of choice, of intelligent selection, must be developed, until by habit, perhaps by instinct, preference for the good, dislike for the bad, becomes ingrained. It is no more difficult to make children realize the immutability of moral laws than it is to teach them the immutability of physical laws. Just as a child knows the effect of gravity, or the action of fire upon the body, so it can be brought to a realization of the distinction between the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly. The standards of these qualities. are absolute. Perception of them must come through intelligent observation and natural training.

If we are ever to get true morality as well as true intellectuality in the schools, it will be by making the pupils recognize the rightness of things. Material things, plants, flowers, crystals, animals, never lie, never cheat; all nature hums and vibrates with truth; water, trees, sounds from metal, stones and wood ring out truth every time. So will the children when by trained observation, and by love and recognition, they realize the divinity and mystery of things. Only by enjoyment and love of work, however, can this be effected, and to do this teachers must inculcate the higher objects of work, of struggle, of sacrifice, of unselfishness, showing that only by work, by earnest endeavor and unceasing effort, can we reach the highest planes of physical and ethical culture.

Children should be taught (1) to recognize the integrity that dwells in all material things, in the wood, in the iron, in

the stone they handle; they should be taught to know that these tough, hard, unyielding materials can be made to respond to their will like plastic wax with a touch, if they use the right flux, a knowledge of their laws. (2) They should be taught to see the beauty and fitness inherent in all nature, not by making economic practical things only from matter, but from being led to take the æsthetic, the everlasting point of view. Many educators seem to forget that the machine of to-day may be out of date in twenty years, and that the tools now in use will become in a measure obsolete. The true and only permanent tools are the instrumentalities of the individual, the eye, the mind, the hands, and to these all primary training should be directed. True art forms never die, or go out of fashion; they will be as fresh in 100 years as to-day. To make such forms in wood, clay, iron, or stone requires as much constructive and mechanical ability, and as much invention, as to make a machine, and exercises and gives opportunity for many more capacities to develop energy. After all, true art forms are machines of the highest type, which compel the use of the most diverse faculties and minister to the highest powers in man, instruments to elevate us to the loftiest abstract conception of justice, truth and beauty.

Any teacher worthy of the name cannot but agree that the abstract ideas of good, of right, of beauty, of integrity, of rectitude, of truth, in the mind of the child must proceed (1) from things, sensations, tastes, (2) from pleasurable actions, (3) from ideas arising from combination and assimilation of the above elements of natural activity and intellectual unfolding. The same is true with regard to ideas of badness, of ugliness, falsity, etc.

grace, beauty, fituess, proportion, will more readily gain abstract ideas of right and wrong than by simply thinking about them. Too much energy is spent in thought that ends in nought. Thought will flow naturally from the concrete to the abstract, if the child is busy in the exercise of its tastes and faculties.

Emerson says: "No matter how much facility of idle seeing man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.' I claim that still more rarely taken is the step from knowing things to making things. The reason is that present educational methods, instead of putting a

man to exert more energy and power in thought and action on material things, really turns his attention away from them. As a man, however uneducated, invariably forms some ideas of space and time, so he invariably forms and accumulates ideas of things. That education is best which fits a man to exert the most energy when desired, whether physical, mental or moral. Emerson says: "A thought is only half a truth until expressed in action." Education should enable a man to make the response immediate between thought and action. The greatest tragedy to-day is the murder of spontaneous ideas, the strangling at birth that goes on under the cloak of conformity to the world, to public opinion. To make a man brave enough to carry out in action his deepest and most secret conviction of right and justice should be the object of the teacher; to do this truly, he must know some of the eternal truths written in things, by coming in contact with them, not as a mechanic or laborer dealing with blocks in stone and wood and iron, of whose qualities and possibilities he knows nothing, but as a fully-developed man, with all his faculties trained and his every organ taught to respond justly to nature's demands.

The power that comes from a true recognition of things, through the faculty of being able to do and deal with things, is not sufficiently considered in the schools. The Report of the Industrial Art School, Philadelphia.

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OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT.

BY L. W. COMPTON.

HE incumbent of the office of superintendent

for good or ill. As a rule the highest type of a man does not always fill this most important office.

A self-respecting man of intellect and character will always find it very humiliating to place himself in a position where ward "bosses" and their henchmen shall control his actions and his opinions. Too many superintendents have yielded to the logic of this situation, and are content to be dumb and drift with the turbid political tide. So long as the people are satisfied with this state of affairs, so long as they do not choose to rescue the office of superintendent from the debasing depth