“_Higher_ primary instruction,” he said, “necessarily includes, in

addition to all the branches of elementary primary instruction,

the elements of geometry, and its common applications, especially

linear drawing and surveying, information on the physical sciences

and natural history, applicable to the uses of life, singing, the

elements of history and geography, and particularly of the history

and geography of France. According to the needs and the resources

of localities, the instruction shall receive such developments as

shall be deemed proper.”

A higher primary school was to be established in the chief towns

of the department and in all the communes which had a population

of more than six thousand souls. The law was executed in part. In

1841, one hundred and sixty-one schools were founded. But little

by little, the indifference of the government, and, above all, the

vanity of parents who preferred for their children worthless Latin

studies to a good and thorough primary instruction, discouraged

these first efforts.

The legislator of 1833 had good reason for thinking that a good

vest was worth more than a poor coat. His mistake was in thinking

that people would be persuaded to abandon the coat in order to

take the vest.[265] The higher schools were almost everywhere

annexed to the colleges of secondary instruction. To suppress their

independence and their own distinctive features was to destroy

them. The final blow was given them by the law of 1850, which

abstained from pronouncing their name, and which condemned them by

its silence.

614. CIRCULAR OF GUIZOT.--In transmitting to teachers the law of

June 28, 1833, Guizot had it followed by a celebrated circular,

which eloquently stated the proper office of the teacher, his

duties and his rights. Here are some passages from it:

“Do not make a mistake here, Sir. While the career of primary

instruction may be without renown, its duties interest the whole

of society, and it is an occupation which shares the importance

attached to public functions.... Universal primary instruction

is henceforth to be one of the guarantees of order and social

stability.”

The circular next examines the material advantages which the new

law assured to teachers, and it continues thus:--

“However, Sir, as I well know, the foresight of the law and

the resources at the disposal of public authority, will never

succeed in rendering the humble profession of a communal teacher

as attractive as it is useful. Society could not reward him who

devotes himself to this service for all that he does for it. There

is no fortune to gain; there is scarcely any reputation to acquire

in the difficult duties which he performs. Destined to see his life

spent in a monotonous occupation, sometimes even to encounter about

him the injustice and the ingratitude of ignorance, he would often

grow disheartened, and would perhaps succumb did he not draw his

strength and his courage from other sources than from the prospect

of an interest immediate and purely personal. It is necessary

that a profound sense of the moral importance of his work sustain

and animate him, and that the austere pleasure of having served

men and secretly contributed to the public good, become the noble

reward which his conscience alone can give. It is his glory to aim

at nothing beyond his obscure and laborious condition, to spend

himself in sacrifices scarcely counted by those who profit by them,

and, in a word, to work for men and to look for his reward only

from God.”

615. PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION.--It would be an interesting

history to relate in detail the progress of popular education

in France from the law of 1833 to our day. The public bills of

the Republic of 1848, the liberal propositions of Carnot and of

Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, the recoil of the law of March 15, 1850,

the _statu quo_ of the first years of the Second Empire, then

towards the end the praiseworthy efforts and tentatives of Duruy,

and, finally, under the Third Republic, the definite and triumphant

organization,--all this is sufficiently known and too recent to

justify us in dwelling on it here.

For successfully introducing anew into the laws the principles of

gratuity, obligation, and secularization, as proclaimed by the

French Revolution, not less than a century was necessary. And in

particular, the better spirits allowed themselves to be convinced

of the need of obligatory instruction only by slow degrees.

However, in 1833, Cousin, who reported the law of Guizot to the

Chamber of Peers, expressed himself as follows:--

“A law which should make of primary instruction a legal obligation

seems to me to be no more above the powers of the legislator than

the law on the national guard, and that which you have just made

on a forced appropriation for the public good. If reasons of

public utility justify the legislator in appropriating private

property, why do not reasons of a much higher utility justify him

in doing less,--in requiring that children receive the instruction

indispensable to every human creature, to the end that he may not

become dangerous to himself or to society as a whole?”

Cousin added that the commission of which he was the chairman would

not have receded from measures wisely combined to make instruction

obligatory, had it not been afraid of provoking difficulties, and,

in this way, of postponing a law that was awaited with impatience.

The evident necessity of instructing the people, the interests of

society, the interests of families and individuals,--all these

considerations have insensibly overcome the scruples or the

illusions of a false liberality, and it is no longer necessary,

to-day, to repeat the eloquent pleas of Carnot in his bill of 1848,

of Duruy, and of Jules Simon.

In 1873 Guizot expressed himself as follows:--

“The liberty of conscience and that of families are facts and

rights which, in this question, ought to be scrupulously respected

and guaranteed; but, under the condition of this respect and of

these guarantees, it may happen that the state of society and the

state of minds may render legal obligation, in respect of primary

instruction, legitimate, salutary, and necessary. _This is the

condition of things to-day._ The movement in favor of obligatory

instruction is sincere, serious, national. Powerful examples

authorize and encourage it. In Germany, in Switzerland, in Denmark,

in most of the American States, primary instruction has this

character, and civilization has reaped excellent fruits from it.

France and its government have reason to welcome this principle.”

616. PROGRAMMES OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--At the same time that

primary instruction made progress by its ever-growing extension,

and by the participation in it of a greater number of individuals,

its programmes were also extended, and it is interesting to compare

in this respect the different laws which have regulated the matter

of instruction in our century.

The law of 1833 said: “Elementary primary instruction necessarily

comprises moral and religious instruction, reading, writing, the

elements of the French language and of computation, the legal

system of weights and measures.”

The bill presented, June 30, 1848, by Carnot, minister of public

instruction, expresses itself thus:--

“Primary instruction comprises: 1. reading, writing, the elements

of the French language, the elements of computation, the metric

system, the measure of distances, elementary notions of the

phenomena of nature, and the principal facts of agriculture and

of industry, linear drawing, singing, elementary notions on the

history and geography of France; 2. a knowledge of the duties and

the rights of man and citizen, the development of the sentiments

of liberty, equality, and fraternity; 3. the elementary rules of

hygiene, and useful exercises in physical development.”

“The religious instruction is given by the ministers of the

different communions.”

According to the bill of Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire (April 10, 1849),

elementary instruction for boys, necessarily comprised “moral,

religious, and civic instruction, reading, writing, the elements of

the French language, the elements of computation, the legal system

of weights and measures, linear drawing, elementary notions of

agriculture and of hygiene, singing and gymnastic exercises.

“According to the needs and resources of localities, elementary

primary instruction shall receive the developments which shall be

thought proper, and shall comprise, in particular, notions on the

history and geography of France.”

Finally, the law of March 15, 1850, is worded thus:--

“Art. 23. Primary instruction comprises moral and religious

instruction, reading, writing, the elements of the French language,

computation, and the legal system of weights and measures. It may

comprise in addition, arithmetic applied to practical operations,

the elements of history and geography, notions of the physical

sciences and of natural history applicable to the ordinary purposes

of life, elementary instruction on agriculture, trade, and hygiene,

surveying, leveling, linear drawing, singing and gymnastics.”

Progress has especially consisted, since 1850, in rendering

obligatory that which was simply optional. History, for example,

did not become a subject of instruction till 1867.

617. THE THEORISTS OF EDUCATION.--Along with the progress of

primary instruction, the historian of the pedagogy of the

nineteenth century would have also to follow the development of

secondary instruction and of superior instruction. He would have to

write the history of the University, reforming the methods of its

lycées and its colleges, and ever enlarging in a noble spirit of

liberty the studies of its faculties. But we should depart from the

limits of our plan, were we to undertake this order of inquiries,

and were we to enter into details which pertain to contemporary

history.

That which should engage our attention is the theoretical

reflections of the different thinkers who, in our century, have

discussed the principles and the laws of education, of those at

least who have become celebrated for their novel views.

618. JACOTOT (1770-1840).--Jacotot, who has maintained scarcely any

celebrity in France except for the singularity of his paradoxes,

is perhaps of all French educators of the nineteenth century

the one who has received most attention abroad, particularly in

Germany. “Jacotot,” says Doctor Dittes, “has incited a lasting

improvement in the public instruction of Germany. The reform

which he introduced into the teaching of reading is important. He

started with an entire sentence, which was pronounced, explained,

and learned by heart by the children, and afterward analyzed into

its constituent parts.”[266] On the other hand, a French critic,

Bernard Perez, has drawn the following portrait of Jacotot:--

“He was the best and the most lovable of men. He had the firmness,

patience, honesty, and candor of superior minds, an inexhaustible

goodness and a universal charity which make him close all his

letters with this formula, ‘I especially commend to you the poor.’

This ardent philanthropy, as well as his enthusiasm and his zeal

for instruction, pervades even his writings, though full of

inequalities and verbal eccentricities.”[267]

619. PARADOXES OF JACOTOT.--In his principal work, _Universal

Instruction_,[268] Jacotot has set forth his principles, which are

so many paradoxes, “All intelligences are equal”; “Every man can

teach, and even teach that which he himself does not know”; “One

can instruct himself all alone”; “All is in all.”

Doubtless at the basis of Jacotot’s paradoxes there is an element

of truth; for example, the very just idea that the best teaching

is that which encourages young minds to think for themselves.

Doubtless also he qualified the exaggeration of his statement when

he said that the inequality of wills at once destroys the equality

of intelligences. But the violent and unreasonable form which he

gave to his ideas has compromised them in public opinion. That

which is true and fruitful in his system has been forgotten, and we

recall only the whimsical formulas in which he delighted.

620. ALL IS IN ALL.--The most famous of Jacotot’s paradoxes is the

formula, “All is in all.” The whole of Latin is in a page of Latin;

the whole of music is in a piece of music; the whole of arithmetic,

in a rule of computation.

In practice, Jacotot made his pupils learn the first six books of

the _Telemachus_. Upon this text, once learned, and recited twice

a week, there were constructed all sorts of exercises, and these

sufficed for the complete knowledge of the French language. In the

same way the _Epitome Historiæ Sacræ_, put in the hands of pupils,

and learned in two months, was almost the sole instrument for the

study of Latin. In fact, and aside from evident exaggerations,

Jacotot rightly thought that it is necessary, as he said, “to learn

something well, and to connect with this all the rest.”

621. THE FOLLOWERS OF SAINT SIMON AND OF FOURIER.--There is

little of practical value to be gathered from the writings of the

celebrated utopists, who, at the opening of this century, became

known by their plans of social organization. It is the chimerical

which characterizes their systems. Cabet demanded among other

absurdities that all ancient books be burned, and that no new

books be written except by command of the State. Besides, he would

have the school-code established by the children themselves.[269]

Victor Considerant suppressed, not books, but discipline and

authority. “The child,” he said, “shall no longer be disobedient,

because he shall no longer be commanded.”[270]

Saint Simon, in 1816, communicated to the _Society for Elementary

Instruction_, a brief essay which gave proof of his interest in

education. For him and his disciples, education is “the aggregate

of efforts to be employed in order to adapt each new generation to

the social order to which it is called by the march of humanity.”

This was to mark the contrast between modern tendencies which

aspire above all else to an earthly and a social end, with ancient

tendencies which were subservient to supernatural ideas. Æsthetic

sentiments, scientific methods, industrial activity,--such is

the triple development which special and professional education

should consider. But above this the Saint-Simonians place moral

education, too much neglected, as they think, which should consist

particularly in developing in the young the sympathetic and

affectionate faculties. The Saint-Simonians placed but little

dependence on science and abstract principles for assuring among

men the reign of morality. Sentiment, in their view, is the

true moral principle, and education, consequently, ought to be

essentially the education of the heart.

622. FOURIER (1772-1837).--Fourier, like Saint Simon, had

educational pretensions. There is nothing more curious than his

treatise on _Natural Education_. In it there is only here and

there a flash of good sense mingled with a multitude of grotesque

fancies.

Fourier renews the utopias of Plato, and confides infants to public

nurses. He is more reasonable when, in spite of his declamations

on the excellence of nature, he is really willing to recognize in

children a diversity of characters, and divides “the nurslings and

the babies” into three classes,--“the benign, the malign, and the

devilkins.”

We must also commend Fourier for his efforts to encourage

industrial activity. There is perhaps a valuable hint in those

walks which he recommends children to take through manufactories

and shops, so that at the sight of such or such a tool, their

particular vocation may be suggested to them!

The instincts of the child are sacred in the eyes of Fourier, even

the worst, their inclination to destroy, for example, or their

contempt for the rights of property. Far from opposing them, he

turns them to account and utilizes them, by employing destructive

and slovenly children in occupations in accord with their tastes;

for example, in the pursuit of reptiles, and in the cleansing of

sewers.

But it is useless to enter into longer details. The education of

the Fourierites is neither a discipline nor a rule of life; it

is simply a system of complaisant adherence, and even of ardent

provocation, to the instincts which the child inherits from nature.

It is no longer a question either of directing or of training; it

is simply necessary to emancipate and to excite.

623. AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857) AND THE POSITIVISTS.--The positivist

school, and its illustrious founder, Auguste Comte, could not

omit, in their encyclopædic works, a question so important as that

of education. The author of the _Course in Positive Philosophy_

had even announced a special treatise on pedagogy, “a great

subject,” he said, “which has not yet been undertaken in a manner

sufficiently systematic.”[271] The promise was not kept, but from

different passages in the writings of Auguste Comte it is possible

to reconstruct, in its principal features, the education which

would be derived from his system.

Comte took for his guide the natural and specific evolution of

humanity.

“Individual education can be adequately estimated only according to

its necessary conformity with collective evolution.”

As positivism represents, in the view of Comte, the supreme degree

of the evolution of humanity, the new education ought to be

_positive_.

“Right-minded men universally recognize the necessity of replacing

our European education, a system essentially theological,

metaphysical, and literary, by a _positive_ education, conformed

to the spirit of our epoch, and adapted to the needs of modern

civilization.”

The teaching of science, then, shall be the basis of education;

but this teaching will bear its fruits only on one condition,

and this is, that at last we renounce “the exclusive specialty,

the too pronounced isolation, which still characterizes our

manner of conceiving and cultivating the sciences.” The precise

purpose of the _Course in Positive Philosophy_ was to remedy the

deleterious influence of a too great specialization of research,

by establishing the relations and the hierarchy of the sciences.

Comte made of mathematics the point of departure in scientific

instruction. This was the very reverse of the modern tendency,

which consists in beginning with the concrete and physical studies.

Auguste Comte, in his project for social reform, demanded universal

instruction, and he bitterly complains of the indifference of the

ruling classes for the instruction of the poor.

“Nothing is more profoundly characteristic of the existing anarchy

than the shameful indifference with which the higher classes of

to-day habitually regard the total absence of popular education,

the exaggerated prolongation of which, however, threatens to exert

on their approaching destiny a frightful reaction.”

Comte does not go so far, however, as to dream of an identical

education for all men, an integral education, as it has been

called. He admits degrees in instruction, “which,” he says, “will

allow varieties of extension in a system constantly similar and

identical.”

624. DUPANLOUP (1803-1878).--Of all the ecclesiastical writers of

our century, he who has the most ardently studied the problems of

education is certainly Bishop Dupanloup. Important works give proof

of the educational zeal of the eloquent prelate. But they were

composed with more spirit than wisdom, and they betray the zeal of

the Christian apologist more than the inspiration of an impartial

love for the truth. Extravagances of language and exaggerations of

thought too often prevent the reader from feeling, as he ought, the

moral and religious inspiration out of which proceeded those books

of ardent and profound faith, but of faith more than of charity.

Notwithstanding their length and their vast proportions, these

books are pamphlets, works of combat. One should be on his guard

against taking them for scientific treatises. Serenity is lacking

in them, and from the very first, we feel ourselves enveloped in an

atmosphere of trouble and storm.

625. ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE ON EDUCATION.--However, the three

volumes of the _Education_ will be read with profit. The first

volume treats of education in general, and contains three books. In

the first book the author determines the character of education,

which has for its purpose to _cultivate_ the faculties, to

_exercise_ them, to _develop_ them, to _strengthen_ them, and,

finally, to _polish_ them. In the following books the author

studies the nature of the child, of whom he sometimes speaks with

a touching tenderness; and examines the means of education, which

are “religion, instruction, discipline, and physical culture.”

Discipline consists in supporting, preventing, and repressing.

Discipline is to education “that which the bark is to the tree

which it surrounds. It is the bark which holds the sap, and forces

it to ascend to the heart of the tree.”

The general title of the second volume is, _On Authority and

Respect in Education_. Authority and respect, in the eyes of the

author, are the two fundamental things. From this point of view, he

studies what he calls the _personnel_ of education; that is, God,

the parents, the teacher, the child, and the schoolmate.

The third volume, entitled _Educational Men_, treats of

the qualities befitting the head master of an educational

establishment, and of his different colleagues.[272]

626. ERRORS AND PREJUDICES.--Although he wrote a beautiful chapter

entitled, _Of the Respect due the Dignity of the Child and the

Liberty of his Nature_, Dupanloup is still more struck with the

faults than with the virtues of childhood. He shudders in thinking

of his thoughtlessness, of his curiosity, of his sensuality, and

especially of his pride. So he distrusts commendation and rewards.

“In praising your pupils,” he says to the teacher, “do you not fear

to excite their pride? The pride of scholars is a terrible evil;

it begins in the ‘third,’ develops in the ‘second,’ blossoms in

‘rhetoric,’ and becomes established in ‘philosophy.’”[273]

To this mistrust of human nature is joined a singular pessimism

with respect to the functions of the teacher.

“There is found,” he says, “in this service, grave troubles.

Sometimes, if we are worthy of this service, if we sacrifice

ourselves to it, we can find consolations in it, but pleasure,

never!”

The verdict is severe and absolute, but it recoils in part on him

who pronounces it. How not mistrust an educator who declares that

there is no sweetness mingled with the fatigues of teaching, and

who condemns the teachers of youth to a life of complete sacrifice

and bitterness?

The greatest fault in the educational spirit of Dupanloup is that

he does not cross the narrow limits of an education in small

seminaries. Dupanloup wrote only for the middle classes. He had no

interest in popular education; he does not love the lay teacher; he

detests the University. Finally, he is the man who inspired the law

of May 15, 1850.

627. THE SPIRITUALISTIC SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY MEN.--The

philosophers of the French spiritualistic school have not in

general paid great attention to the theory of education. The most

illustrious of them, Cousin (1792-1868), at the same time that

he aided in organizing University instruction, carefully studied

educational institutions abroad, especially in his two works,

_Public Instruction in Holland_ (1837), and _Public Instruction in

Germany_ (1840). The works of Jules Simon have the same practical

character, but with a marked tendency to treat by preference

the questions of primary instruction. The _School_ (1864) is a

manifesto in favor of gratuity and obligation.

The University men, on their part, have, in this century, acted

rather than speculated. They have been intent rather on making

good pupils than on composing theories. There would, however,

be valuable truths to cull from the works of Cournot,[274] of

Bersot,[275] and especially of Michel Bréal.[276]

[628. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. One of the main characteristics of

the educational thought of this century is doubtless the effort

to deduce the rules of practice from certain first principles.

The principles of instruction are to be found, for the most part,

in the science of psychology, and the principles of education, in

part, in social science and even in jurisprudence.

2. The purpose of Napoleon to secure the perpetuity of his

dynasty through the influence of his Imperial University, is a

striking proof of the belief in the potency of ideas, and of

the belief in the potency of popular instruction as a means of

national strength.

3. The history of mutual instruction exhibits three important

facts: 1. the effect of agitation in arousing public interest

in educational questions; 2. the manner in which peculiar

circumstances suggest an expedient which can be justified on no

absolute grounds; 3. the danger of converting such an expedient

into a “system” for universal adoption.

4. Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Jacotot, attempted to make

instruction universal by simplifying its processes to such a

degree that every mother might be a teacher and every household

a school.

5. In Comte we see the re-appearance of Condillac’s doctrine,

that the historic education of the race is the type of individual

education. The same hypothesis will re-appear in Mr. Spencer’s

_Education_.]

FOOTNOTES:

[255] Fourcroy (1755-1809), a celebrated chemist, was

director-general of public instruction in 1801. He prepared, in the

following years, the decrees relative to the establishment of the

University.

[256] Fontanes (1757-1821), first Grand Master of the University.

[257] _Mémoire politique_ of Joseph de Maistre, Paris, 1858, p. 30.

[258] The Abbé Gaultier (1746-1818), author of a large number of

works on elementary instruction, and almost a reformer in his

way. He employed _teaching by sight_, and recommended varied

exercises, such as games where he introduced _counters_, tickets,

interrogations in the form of _lotteries_.

[259] See Gréard, _L’enseignement primaire à Paris de 1867

à 1877_. A memoir published in 1877, pp. 75-90. See also an

interesting study full of personal recollections of E. Deschamps,

_L’enseignement mutual_. Toulouse, 1883.

[260] Jomard (1777-1862), member of the Society for Elementary

Instruction, author of _Tableaux des écoles élémentaires_.

[261] The Comte de Laborde (1771-1842), author of a _plan

d’éducation pour les enfants_.

[262] Among the other propagators of mutual instruction, mention

should be made of the Abbé Gaultier, Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, De

Lasteyrie, etc.

[263] Two noted attempts to extend and popularize the monitorial

system are exhibited in the following works: Pillans,

_The Rationale of Discipline_ (Edinburgh, 1852); Bentham,

_Chrestomathia_ (London, 1816).

[264] It is at the same period, in 1832, that Gérando published his

_Cours normal des instituteurs_.

[265] Cournot, _Des institutions d’instruction publique_, p. 315.

[266] Dittes, _op. cit._ p. 272.

[267] See _Jacotot et sa méthode d’émancipation intellectuelle_, by

Bernard Perez. Paris, 1883.

[268] _Enseignement universel._ Paris, 1823.

[269] Cabet, _Voyage en Icarie_. Paris, 1842.

[270] Considerant, _Théorie d’éducation rationnelle et attrayante

du dix-neuvième siècle_. Paris, 1844.

[271] _Cours de philosophie positive_, second edition, 1864. Vol.

VI. p. 771.

[272] The principal educational works of Dupanloup are _Éducation_,

1851, three volumes; _De la haute éducation intellectuelle_, 1855,

three volumes; _Lettres sur l’éducation des filles_, 1879, one

volume.

[273] See note to page 131.

[274] Cournot published in 1864 a remarkable book under this title:

_Des institutions d’instruction publique_.

[275] See the _Essais de philosophie et de morale_, by E. Bersot,

and also _Études et discours_ (1879).

[276] See especially the well-known book of Bréal, _Quelques mots

sur l’instruction publique en France_.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.--HERBERT SPENCER AND ALEXANDER BAIN.

THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS; THE ENGLISH

PHILOSOPHERS; HERBERT SPENCER’S EDUCATION; PLAN OF THE WORK;

DEFINITION OF EDUCATION; HUMAN DESTINY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES;

DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF ACTIVITIES; CRITICISM OF MR. SPENCER’S

CLASSIFICATION; EFFECTS ON EDUCATION; SCIENCE IS THE BASIS

OF EDUCATION; SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY;

SCIENCE FOR FAMILY LIFE; SCIENCE FOR ÆSTHETIC ACTIVITY;

EXAGGERATIONS AND PREJUDICES; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; LAWS OF

MENTAL EVOLUTION; PERSONAL EDUCATION; MORAL EDUCATION; SYSTEM

OF NATURAL PUNISHMENTS; DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION; RETURN TO

NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; GENERAL JUDGMENT; MR. BAIN AND THE

SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; GENERAL IMPRESSIONS; DIVISIONS OF THE BOOK;

PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER AND LOGICAL ORDER; MODERN EDUCATION; ERRORS

IN THEORY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES; FINAL JUDGMENT; AMERICAN

EDUCATORS; CHANNING; HORACE MANN; CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.

629. THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.--To-day, thanks to important works,

the science of education is no longer an empty term, an object of

vague aspirations for philosophers, of easy ridicule for wits.

Doubtless it is far from being definitely established; but it

no longer conceals its name and its pretensions; it defines its

purpose and its methods; and manifests its youthful vitality in all

directions.

Up to the present period, philosophers had scarcely thought of

organizing pedagogy, of constructing it on a rational basis. On

the other hand, the practice of education is still less advanced

than the conceptions of philosophers. Here we the more often follow

a thoughtless routine, or the vague inspirations of instinct.

The methods in use are not co-ordinated. They present a curious

mixture of old traditions and modern surcharges. It is this lack of

definiteness, of co-ordination of ideas, and the spectacle of these

contradictions, which caused Richter[277] to say: “The education

of the day resembles the Harlequin of the Italian comedy who comes

on the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm. ‘What do you

carry under your right arm?’ he is asked. ‘Orders,’ he replies.

‘And under your left arm?’ ‘Counter-orders!’”

Quite a number of the philosophers of the nineteenth century have

attempted to remedy this incoherence, and, by appealing to the

scientific spirit, to regulate educational processes that have

fallen into excesses of empiricism or of routine. It is these

attempts which we are summarily to recite.

630. THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Since Kant, and by his example, the

most of German philosophers have associated the theory of education

with their speculations on human nature.

Fichte (1762-1814), in his _Discourse to the German Nation_,

proclaimed the necessity of a national education to secure the

regeneration of his country and its restoration to its former

standing. The advocate of a public and common education, because he

would fight against the selfishness which family life encourages,

he contributed by his eloquent appeals to restore the intellectual

and moral grandeur, and consequently, the material grandeur, of

Germany.

Schleiermacher (1768-1834) wrote a _Doctrine of Education_, which

was not published till 1849. In this he develops, among other

ideas, this proposition, that religious education does not belong

to the school, but that it is the affair of the family and the

Church.

Herbart (1776-1841) has composed a series of pedagogical writings

which assign him a special place in the list of educational

philosophers. Let us call attention, in particular, to his _General

Pedagogy_ (1806), and the _Outline of my Lessons on Pedagogy_

(1840). That which distinguishes Herbart is his attempt to reduce

to a system all the rules of pedagogy by giving them for a basis

his own psychological theory. He inaugurated a new method in

psychology, which does not seem, however, to have given the results

that were expected from it,--the mathematical method. For him,

psychology is only the mechanism of the mind, and by means of

mathematical formula calculation may be applied to measure the

force of ideas. The soul does not possess innate faculties; it is

developed progressively.

But it would require long efforts to enter into the secrets of

Herbart’s original thought. Let it suffice to say, that nurtured

from an early period on the ideas of Pestalozzi, whose friend he

was, he has founded a real school of pedagogy.

Beneke (1798-1854) is the author of a _Doctrine of Education

and Instruction_, which is, in the opinion of Doctor Dittes, a

masterpiece of psychological pedagogy. Beneke agrees with Herbart

on a great number of points. His pedagogical methods have been

popularized by J. G. Dressler, director of the normal school at

Bauzen, who died in 1860.[278]

Charles Schmidt, who died in 1864, wrote a large number of works on

pedagogy, in which he is inspired by the phrenology of Gall and his

fantastical hypotheses. Doubtless this inspiration is not happy,

and the works of Schmidt are more valuable for their details,

for their special reflections, than for their general doctrine.

But from his undertaking there issues at least this truth, that

the science of education should have for its basis, not only

psychology, but physiology also, the science of the whole man, body

and mind.

There is no country where pedagogy has received a more

philosophical and a higher development than in Germany. Even the

great poets, Lessing, Herder, Gœthe, and Schiller, have contributed

through certain grand ideas to the construction of a science of

education.

631. THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS.--English philosophy, with its

experimental and practical character, and with its positive and

utilitarian tendencies, was naturally called to exercise a great

influence on pedagogy. There are more truths to gather from the

thinkers who, in different degrees, have followed Locke and Bain,

and who have preserved a taste for prudent observation and careful

experiments, than from the German idealists, enamored of hypothesis

and systematic constructions.

Without doubt this explains the considerable success which the

recent books of Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain have obtained

even in France.

632. THE BOOK OF HERBERT SPENCER.--If it were sufficient to

define with exactness the end to be attained, and to discover the

true method for constructing the science, Herbert Spencer’s book

on _Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical_,[279] would

be a satisfactory treatise; but it is one thing to comprehend

that psychology is the only solid basis of a complete and exact

pedagogy, and another thing to determine the real laws of

psychology.

“Education will not be definitely systematized,” says Mr. Spencer,

“till the day when science shall be in possession of a rational

psychology.”

This day has not yet come, and Herbert Spencer, who is the first

to recognize the fact, modestly presents his work only as an

essay. But if it does not yet contain a perfect and fully worked

out theory of education, the essay of the English philosopher is

at least a vigorous effort, and a notable step towards a rational

pedagogy, towards the science of education, which, as Virchow

expresses it, “ought forever to proscribe the gropings of an

ignorant education whose experiments are ever to be gone over anew.”

633. PLAN OF THE WORK.--Every system of education supposes at the

same time an ethics,--I mean a certain conception of life and of

human destiny, and a psychology,--that is, a knowledge more or

less exact of our faculties and of the laws which preside over

their development. There are, in fact, in education, two essential

questions: 1. What are the subjects of study and instruction,

proper to create the qualities, the aggregate of which constitutes

the type of the well-educated man? 2. By what methods shall we

teach the child rapidly and well that which it is proper for him

to learn? There are, in other terms, the question of end and the

question of means. Ethics is necessary to resolve the first, and

psychology, to illustrate the second.

It is in accordance with this plan that Mr. Spencer has arranged

the different parts of his work. The first chapter, entitled _What

Knowledge is of Most Worth?_ is in substance but a series of

reflections on the final purpose, on the different forms, of human

activity, and, consequently, on the relative importance, on the

rank, which should be assigned to the studies which go to compose

a complete education.

In the three other chapters, _Intellectual_, _Moral_, and _Physical

Education_, the author examines the methods which are deemed

the best for instructing the intelligence, perfecting the moral

character, and fortifying the body.

634. DEFINITION OF EDUCATION.--Herbert Spencer begins with a

definition of education:--

“Education,” he says, “is all that we do for ourselves, and all

that others do for us, for the purpose of bringing us nearer the

perfection of our nature.... The ideal of education would be to

furnish man with a complete preparation for life as a whole....

Do not attempt to give an exclusive development of one order of

knowledge at the expense of the rest, however important it may

be. Let us distribute our attention over the whole, and justly

proportion our efforts to their relative value.... In general,

the object of education ought to be to acquire as completely as

possible the knowledge that is best adapted to develop individual

and social life under all its aspects, and to do no more than

glance at the subjects which contribute the least to this

development.”[280]

This definition is wrong in being a little pretentious and in not

adapting itself to all the forms of education. It is true, perhaps,

if it is a question of the ideal to be attained in a complete

instruction, accessible to a few privileged men, but it could not

be applied to popular education. It soars too high above human

conditions and social realities.

635. HUMAN DESTINY.--The conception of human destiny, as Mr.

Spencer outlines it in the opening of his book, has very marked

utilitarian tendencies. His first complaint against the current

education is that it sacrifices the useful to the agreeable; that

as matters now go, everything which pertains to mental adornment

and display has precedence over the knowledge which might increase

our well-being and assure our happiness. As in the history of

dress, with savages for example, it is proved that the ornamental

in dress precedes the useful; so in instruction, ornamental studies

are preferred to useful studies. This is especially the case with

women, who have a decided preference for the qualities of pure

decoration.[281]

In his rather vigorous reaction against the luxuries which in

classical instruction would wrongly substitute themselves for more

necessary studies, Mr. Spencer goes so far as to say:--

“Just as the Orinoco Indian paints and tattooes himself, so the

child in this country learns Latin because it forms a part of the

education of a gentleman.”

However, we do not construe this literally. Mr. Spencer does not

go so far as to suppress the disinterested studies which are as

much the more necessary as they seem to be the more superfluous. He

merely demands that instruction be not reduced to a training in the

trivial elegancies of a dead language, or to a study of trifles in

history, such as the dates of battles, and the birth and death of

princes.

636. UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES.--Utility, that is, the influence

on happiness,--such is the true criterion by which are to be

estimated, admitted or excluded, and finally classified, the

subjects proposed for the study of man as the elements of his

education. It is understood, however, that happiness is to be

considered in its widest and highest sense. Happiness does

not consist in the satisfaction of such or such a privileged

inclination. It consists in being all that it is possible to

be,--in complete living. To prepare us for a complete life,--such

is the function of education.

637. DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF ACTIVITY.--Complete life supposes

different kinds of activity, which ought to be subordinated one to

another according to their importance and dignity. The following

statement shows how Mr. Spencer proposes to classify these

different categories of activities according to an ascending scale

of progress:--

1. In the first rank is placed the activity which ministers simply

to self-preservation. It would be of no consequence to be an

eminent scholar, or a citizen and a patriot, or a devoted father;

or rather, all this would be impossible, if one did not first know

how to assure his safety and his life.

2. Then comes the series of activities which tend _indirectly_

to the same end of physical well-being, by the acquisition and

production of the material goods necessary for existence, that is,

industry and the different occupations.

3. In the third place, man employs his activities in the service of

his family,--he has children to support and to bring up.

4. Social and political life is the fourth object of his efforts.

This supposes, as a previous condition, the accomplishment of

family duties, just as family life itself supposes the normal

development of the individual life.

5. Finally, human existence is consummated and crowned, so to

speak, in the exercise of the activities which, in a single word,

we might call æsthetic, and which, taking advantage of the leisure

left from care and business, will find satisfaction in the culture

of letters and the arts.

638. CRITICISM OF THIS CLASSIFICATION.--What exceptions can be

taken to this exact and methodical table of the different elements

of an existence complete, normal, and consequently human? Is

it necessary to remark that the happiness thus understood does

not differ from what we call virtue? None of the five elements

distinguished by Mr. Spencer can be safely omitted. The first

could not be neglected without endangering the material reality of

life; nor the last, without impairing its moral dignity. In some

degree they are mutually necessary, in this sense, that the lower,

or selfish activities, are the conditions which make possible the

other parts of human duty; and that the higher, or disinterested

activities, become, as it were, the justification of the toil we

endure in order to exist and to satisfy material necessities.

We have, however, one grave reserve to make. Mr. Spencer is wrong

in putting into the last category of activities that which is the

crown of the others, all that which concerns the moral development

of the individual. Between the second and the third class of

activities we ask to interpolate another form of activity,--that

which constitutes the individual moral life, that which, in every

man, even the humblest and the poorest, calls into exercise the

conscience, the reason, and the will. Mr. Spencer’s system is

decidedly too aristocratic. It seems to reserve the moral life for

men of leisure. In a democratic society, which believes in equality

and which would not have this an empty term, there are efforts

which must be made for the moral development of the human being in

all conditions, and it would be wrong to reduce personal activity

to the care of health and material well-being.

639. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--It is now easy to comprehend the duties

of education. Conforming its efforts to nature, distributing its

lessons according to the exact division of human functions, it

will seek the branches of knowledge the most fit for making of the

pupil, first, a sound and healthy man, then a toiler, a workman,--a

man, in a word, capable of earning his livelihood; then it will

train him for the family and the State, by endowing him with all

the domestic and civic virtues; finally, it will open to him the

brilliant domain of art under all its forms.

640. SCIENCE IS THE BASIS OF EDUCATION.--When we have once divided

human life into a certain number of superimposed stages which

education should teach us to ascend one after another, it becomes

necessary to know what are the facts and the branches of knowledge

which correspond to each one of these different steps. To this

question Mr. Spencer replies that in all the grades of human

development that which is pre-eminently necessary, that which is

the basis of education, is science.

641. SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY.--It is in

the first part of education, that which has for its object

self-preservation, that science is the least useful. So far,

education may be in great part negative, because nature has taken

it upon herself to lead us to our destination. The child cries at

the sight of a stranger, and throws himself into the arms of his

mother when he feels the slightest sorrow. However, in proportion

to his growth, man has more and more need of science, and he could

not do without physiology and hygiene. By this means will he shun

all those little acts of imprudence, all those physical faults,

which shorten life, or pave the way for infirmities in old age. By

this means he will diminish the interval, which is so considerable,

between the length of life as it might be and the brevity of life

as it is. Evident truths, but too often unheeded!

“How many scholars,” exclaims Mr. Spencer, “who would blush

if caught saying Iphigénia instead of Iphigenía, show not the

slightest shame in confessing that they do not know where the

Eustachian tubes are, and what are the actions of the spinal cord!”

With respect to the activities which might be called lucrative, and

to the kind of instruction which they require, Mr. Spencer still

shows the utility of science. He knows how great a disposition

there is in modern society to promote professional or industrial

instruction; but he thinks, not without reason, that we do not

proceed as we should in order to be completely successful in this

direction. All the sciences, mathematics through its applications

to the arts, mechanics through its connection with industries

where machines play so great a part, physics and chemistry through

the knowledge they furnish on matter and its properties, even

the social sciences by reason of the relations of commerce with

politics,--all the sciences, in a word, contribute to develop the

skill and the prudence of the man who is employed in any trade or

occupation whatever.

642. SCIENCE FOR FAMILY LIFE.--A point in which the originality of

Mr. Spencer’s thought is distinctly marked, and which he develops

with an eloquent earnestness, is the necessity of enlightening

parents, and particularly mothers, upon their obligations and

duties, and of putting them in a condition to direct the education

of their children by teaching them the natural laws of body and

mind: “Is it not monstrous,” he says, “that the fate of a new

generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom,

impulse, fancy,--joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses

and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers.... In the actual state

of things the best instruction, even among the favored by fortune,

is scarcely more than an instruction of celibates.” We are ever

saying that the vocation of woman is to bring up her children,

and yet we teach her nothing of that which she ought to know in

order to fulfill worthily this great task. Ignorant as she is of

the laws of life and of the phenomena of the soul, knowing nothing

of the nature of the moral emotions or of physical disorders, her

intervention in the education of the child is often more disastrous

than her absolute inaction would be.

643. SCIENCE IN ÆSTHETIC EDUCATION.--Mr. Spencer next shows that

social and political activity also has need of being enlightened

by science. One is a citizen only on the condition of knowing the

history of his country.

That which it is more difficult to grant Mr. Spencer, is that

æsthetic education, in its turn, is based on science. Is there not

some exaggeration, for example, in asserting that poor musical

compositions are poor because they are lacking in truth? and that

they are lacking in truth “because they are lacking in science”?

Does one become a man of letters and an artist as one becomes a

geometrician? To cultivate with success those arts which are as the

flower of civilization, is there not required, besides talent and

natural gifts, a long practice, a slow initiation, something, in

a word, more delicate than the attention which suffices for being

instructed in science?

644. EXAGGERATIONS AND PREJUDICES.--We believe as thoroughly as

any one can in the efficiency and in the educational virtues

of science, and we would willingly make it, as Mr. Spencer

does, the basis of education. We must be on our guard, however,

against cultivating this religion of science until it becomes a

superstition. Our author is not completely exempt from this danger.

That science develops the intellectual qualities, such as judgment,

memory, reasoning, we admit; that it develops them better than

the study of the languages, let even this be granted! But it is

impossible for us not to protest when Mr. Spencer represents

science as endowed with the same efficacy for inspiring moral

qualities, such as perseverance, sincerity, activity, resignation

to the will of nature, piety even, and religion. Science appears

to us an infallible means of animating and exciting the different

energies of the soul; but will it also have the quality of

disciplining them? Thanks to science, man will know that which

it is proper to do, if he wishes to be a workman, a parent, or a

citizen, but on this express condition, that he _wills_; and this

education of the will, is it still science which shall be charged

with it? We may be allowed to doubt it.

Mr. Spencer himself now seems to share this doubt, if we may trust

one of his recent works.[282] “Faith in books and in nature,” it is

there said, “is one of the superstitions of our times.” We deceive

ourselves, says the author, when we establish a connection between

the intelligence and the will, for conduct is determined not by

knowledge but by emotion.

“He who would hope to teach geometry by giving lessons in Latin,

would scarcely be more unreasonable than those who count on

producing better sentiments by means of a discipline of the

intellectual faculties.”

To tell the truth, Mr. Spencer has here fallen into another

extreme, and he seems to us at one time to have granted too much,

and at another too little, to the influence of instruction on

morality.

645. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--So far we have examined along with

Mr. Spencer only the nature of the objects and of the knowledge

which befit the education of man. It remains to inquire how the

mind can assimilate this knowledge. Pedagogy has not only to draw

up in theory a brilliant programme of necessary studies, but it

also searches out the means and the methods to be employed, in

order that these studies may be presented to the mind, and may have

the greater chance of being thus presented with profit.

In this somewhat more practical part of his work, Mr. Spencer

thinks that pedagogy should be guided by the idea of evolution;

that is, of the progressive course of a being who makes himself,

who creates himself little by little, and who develops in

succession, according to fixed laws, powers originally enveloped

in the germs that he has received from nature, or that have been

transmitted to him by heredity.

646. LAWS OF INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION.--In other terms, Mr.

Spencer shows that the precepts of pedagogy cannot be definitely

deduced until the laws of mental evolution have been accurately

established, and he attempts to determine some of these laws.

He proves that the mind passes naturally from the simple to the

complex, from the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to

the abstract, from the empirical to the rational; that the genesis

of the individual is the same as the genesis of the race; that the

intelligence assimilates by preference that which it discovers for

itself; finally, that all culture which profits the pupil is, at

the same time, an exercise which stimulates him and delights him.

From this there result these practical consequences: that it

is necessary first to present to the child simple subjects of

study, individual things, sensible objects, for the purpose of

starting him gradually on his way towards complex truths, abstract

generalities, conceptions of the reason; that nothing can be

exacted of the child’s intelligence but vague and incomplete

notions which the travail of the mind will gradually clarify

and elaborate; that education ought to be _in petto_, for each

individual, a repetition and a copy of the general march of

civilization and of the progress of humanity; that it is necessary

to count more on the personal effort of the pupil than upon the

action of the teacher; that, finally, it is necessary to find the

methods which interest, and even those which amuse. Hence the

educator, instead of opposing nature, instead of disconcerting her

in her course and in the insensible steps of her real development,

will restrict himself to following her step by step, and education

will be no longer a force which obstructs, which represses,

which smothers; but, on the contrary, a force which sustains and

stimulates by associating with itself the work of the spontaneous

powers of the soul.

647. SELF-EDUCATION.--Mr. Spencer attaches great importance

to that maxim which recommends us to encourage above all else

self-education:--

“In education the process of self-development should be encouraged

to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own

investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be

_told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as much as

possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and

that to achieve the best results, each mind must progress somewhat

after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked

success of self-made men. Those who have been brought up under

the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with them the

idea that education is practicable only in that style, will think

it hopeless to make children their own teachers. If, however, they

will call to mind that the all-important knowledge of surrounding

objects which a child gets in its early years is not without

help,--if they will remember that the child is self-taught in the

use of its mother tongue,--if they will estimate the amount of

that experience of life, that out-of-school wisdom which every boy

gathers for himself,--if they will mark the unusual intelligence

of the uncared-for London _gamin_, as shown in all the directions

in which his faculties have been tasked,--if further, they will

think how many minds have struggled up unaided, not only through

the mysteries of our irrationally-planned _curriculum_, but

through hosts of other obstacles besides; they will find it a not

unreasonable conclusion, that if the subjects be put before him in

right order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will

surmount his successive difficulties with but little assistance.”

648. MORAL EDUCATION.--Moral education, without furnishing

occasion for as complete a theory as intellectual education, has,

nevertheless, suggested to Mr. Spencer some important reflections.

Mr. Spencer expressly declares that he does not accept the dogma

of Lord Palmerston, or what would be called in France the dogma of

Rousseau, namely, that all children are born good. He would incline

the rather toward the contrary opinion, which, “though untenable,”

he says, “seems to us less wide of the truth”! Doubtless, we must

not expect too much moral goodness of children; but it may be

found that Mr. Spencer exaggerates a little, and draws too dark

a portrait of the child when he says, “The child resembles the

savage; his physical features, like his moral instincts, recall the

savage.” Taken literally, such pessimism would lead logically to an

over-severe moral discipline, wholly repressive and restraining.

Such, however, is not the conclusion of Mr. Spencer, who recommends

a course of tolerance and mildness, a system of relative letting

alone which we might almost think dictated by the optimism of

Rousseau. He censures the brutal discipline of the English schools.

Finally, he would have the child treated, not as an incorrigible

rebel who is obedient only to force, but as a reasonable being

capable of readily comprehending the reasons and the advantages

of obedience, from the simple fact that he takes into account the

connection of cause and effect.

649. SYSTEM OF NATURAL PUNISHMENTS.--The true moral discipline,

according to Mr. Spencer, is that which puts the child in a state

of dependence on nature, who teaches him to detest his faults

by reason of the natural consequences which they involve. It is

necessary to renounce artificial punishments, which are almost

always irritating and taken amiss, and to have recourse, as a

rule, only to the privations and the inconveniencies which are the

necessary consequences, and, as it were, the inevitable reactions,

of the acts which have been committed.

A boy, for example, puts his room in disorder. In this case, the

method of natural punishment requires that he himself shall repair

the mischief; and in this way he will soon correct himself of a

turbulence from which he will be the first to suffer.

A little girl, through indolence, or through tarrying too long over

her toilet, has made herself late for a walk. Let her be punished

by not waiting for her, by leaving her at home. This is the best

means of curing her in the future of her indolence and coquetry.

The system which tends thus to substitute the lessons of nature

for artificial penalties, certainly offers great advantages. It

subjects the child, not to the authority of a passing teacher, or

of parents who will one day die, but to a law whose action neither

ceases nor ever relents. Artificial punishments often provoke

the resistance of the child because he does not comprehend their

meaning, and because, proceeding from the human will, they can be

taxed with injustice and caprice. Could one as easily refuse to

bow before the impersonal force of nature,--a force which exactly

adjusts the punishment to the fault,[283] which accepts no excuse,

against which there is no appeal, and which, without threats,

without anger, rigorously and silently executes the law?

650. DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION.--Mr. Spencer’s principle is

excellent, but the opportunities for applying it are far less

frequent than our philosopher believes. The child, in most cases,

is too little reflective, too little reasonable, to comprehend, and

especially to heed, the suggestions of personal interest.

Let us add that this principle is wholly negative, that it

furnishes at most only the means of shunning evil; that even in

according to it an efficacy it does not have, it would still be

necessary to reproach it with narrowing moral culture by reducing

it to the rather mean solicitude for simple utility; finally,

that it exercises no influence on the development of the positive

virtues, on the disinterested education of morality in what is

noble and exalted.

Finally, the system of natural punishments would incur the danger

of often being cruel, and of causing the child an irreparable

injury. Let pass the pin-cushion, the boiling water, and the

candle-flame,--examples which Mr. Spencer proposes; but what shall

we say of the bar of red-hot iron which he lets the child pick up?

What shall be said, above all, of the grave consequences entailed

by the faults of a young man left to himself?

“Would it not be,” says Gréard justly, “to condemn the child to

a régime so severe as to be an injustice, to count solely on the

effects of natural reactions and inevitable consequences, for the

purpose of disciplining his will? The penalty which they provoke

is the most often enormous as compared with the fault which has

produced them, and man himself demands for his conduct other

sanctions than those of a harsh reality. He desires that we judge

the intention as well as the fact; that he be commended for his

efforts; that in the first instance extreme measures be not taken

against him; that the blow fall on him if needs be, but without

crushing him, and while extending to him a hand to help him

up.”[284]

651. RETURN TO NATURE.--However it may be, Mr. Spencer is to

be commended for having shown that for moral education as for

intellectual education, the method which approaches nature the

nearest is also the best. The return to nature which was the

characteristic of Rousseau’s theories and of Pestalozzi’s practice,

is also the dominant trait of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy.

If we look closely into the matter, this decided purpose to follow

nature implicates something besides the superficial condemnation

of methods introduced by art and human device. It supposes a

fundamental belief,--the belief in the beneficent purpose of

natural instincts. To have confidence in nature, to fall back on

the spontaneous forces of the soul, because we discern behind

them or in them a higher providence or an internal foresight, is

a belief generally useful and suggestive for conducting human

affairs, but particularly necessary for directing the education

of man. It is not without some surprise that we discover this

belief at the basis of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy, as though, by a

contradiction which is not new, the evolutionist philosophy,

which seems to exclude final causes from the conception of the

universe, had been practically constrained to bow before them, and

to proclaim, at least in the matter of education, the salutary

efficacy of the theory which admits them.

Thus, in speaking of physical education, Mr. Spencer remarks that

the sensations are the natural guides, which it would be dangerous

not to follow.

“Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure

direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for.

Too momentous to be left to our own blundering, Nature takes it

into her own hands.”

Speaking in another place of the instincts which induce the child

to move himself and to seek in physical exercise the basis of

physical well-being, he declares that to oppose these instincts

would be to go counter to the means “_divinely_ arranged” for

assuring the development of the body.

652. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--The chapter devoted by Mr. Spencer to

physical education, is such as might be expected from a thinker

who is wholly exempt from idealistic prejudices and who does not

hesitate to write:--

“The history of the world shows that the well-fed races have been

the energetic and dominant races.”

It is necessary first and above all to establish physical force in

man, and to create within him “a robust animal.”

“The actual education of children is defective in several

particulars: in an insufficiency of food, in an insufficiency of

clothing, in an insufficiency of exercise, and in an excess of

mental application.”

Mr. Spencer complains that modern education has become wholly

intellectual, and that it neglects the body. He reminds us that

“the preservation of health is one of our duties,” and that there

exists a thing which might be called “physical morality.”

Here, as everywhere, Mr. Spencer demands that we follow the

indications of nature. He explains on physiological grounds the

apparently inordinate appetite which children show for certain

foods,--sugar, for example. He urgently entreats that preference

shall be given to play and to free and spontaneous exercise, over

gymnastics.

653. GENERAL JUDGMENT.--That which, in our opinion, attests the

truth of the pedagogical laws which we have just discussed, is

that they are in agreement with the general opinions of the great

modern reformers in education. It is thus that Spencer’s ideas are

in close harmony with those which Pestalozzi had employed at Stanz.

The success which he obtained there, as Mr. Spencer has remarked,

depended on two things: first, on the attention which he used in

determining what kind of instruction the children had need of, and

next, on the pains he took to associate the new knowledge with that

which they already possessed.

Mr. Spencer’s essay, then, deserves the attention of educators.

There is scarcely a book in which a keen scent for details comes

more agreeably to animate a fund of solid arguments, and from

which it is more useful to extract the substance. However, it

must not be read save with precaution. The brilliant English

thinker sometimes fails in justness and measure, and his bold

generalizations need to be tested with care.

654. ALEXANDER BAIN AND EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE.--Less brilliant

than the work of Mr. Spencer, the book of Mr. Bain, _Education

as a Science_, recommends itself by merits of studied analysis

and scholarly minuteness. Others surpass Mr. Bain in brilliancy

of imagination, in originality and in enthusiasm; but no one

equals him in richness of details, in acuteness and abundance of

observations. After the more venturesome have taken the lead and

have published the original sketch, Mr. Bain appears and writes

the methodical and complete manual. His own work resembles that

of a conscientious guard who marches in the rear of a victorious

army, and by a wise organization makes sure the positions conquered

by the march of an impetuous commander-in-chief. His book, in

other terms, is but the studious and thorough development of Mr.

Spencer’s principles.

655. GENERAL IMPRESSION.--It is impossible in an analysis to

bring out the merit of a book which is especially valuable for

the multiplicity of the questions which the author discusses

in it, and for the infinite variety of the solutions which he

proposes. There are landscapes which discourage the painter,

because, notwithstanding their beauty, they are too vast, too full

of details, to admit of being crowded into a frame. We may say

the same of Mr. Bain’s book. One must have studied it himself in

order to form an estimate of its value. Professors of all classes

will here find pages of well-considered counsels, and judicious

reflections upon educational methods. The nature of studies, the

sequence of subjects, the gradation of difficulties, the choice

of exercises, the comparison of oral instruction with text-book

instruction, modes of discipline,--nothing escapes a thinker who is

not a mere theorist or an amateur educator, but a professional man,

a competent teacher, an experienced professor.

Indeed, no one should allow himself to be deceived by this fine

phrase, _Education as a Science_, which might disconcert and turn

aside whole classes of readers, such as those who, in works on

education, especially desire a guide for practice. On the contrary,

they will have every reason to commend a book which passes very

quickly from generalities to applications, and which is above all

else a manual of practical and technical pedagogy. The study of it

will be profitable not merely to professors who are teaching the

higher branches of literature and science, but even to the humblest

instructors, and even--for Mr. Bain overlooks no detail--to

teachers of reading and writing.

656. DIVISION OF THE WORK.--_Education as a Science_ comprises

three parts: 1. psychological data; 2. methods; 3. modern education.

The author first inquires in what order the faculties are

developed, and what effect this order should have on the

distribution of studies. This is the psychological part. Then

follows a discussion of what Mr. Bain calls the logical order, that

is, of the relations which exist between the studies themselves

and their different parts. This is the “analytical problem” of

education.[285]

These preliminaries being established, Mr. Bain enters upon the

principal theme,--the methods of instruction. He discusses one

after another the first elements of reading, object-lessons,

“which, more than any other means of instruction, require to be

practised with care, for without this, an admirable process might,

in unskillful hands, be nothing more than a thing of seductive

appearance, but without value”; then methods relating to history,

geography, the sciences, and the languages.

Finally, in his third book, Mr. Bain exhibits a new plan of study,

with particular reference to secondary instruction.

657. PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER AND LOGICAL ORDER.--In his reflections on

the development of the mind and upon the distribution of studies,

Mr. Bain is inspired by the principles which have guided Mr.

Spencer.

“Observation precedes reflection. The concrete comes before the

abstract.”

In education, then, the sequence should be from the simple to the

complex, from the particular to the general, from the indefinite to

the definite, from the empirical to the rational, from analysis to

synthesis, from the outline to details; finally, from the material

to the immaterial.

Such would be the ideal order in education; but Mr. Bain remarks

that in practice all sorts of obstacles come to disturb this

rigorous sequence.

658. MODERN EDUCATION.--The plan of secondary studies which Mr.

Bain recommends to the reformers of teaching is the result and the

_résumé_ of all these observations.

Intellectual education, common to all young people who receive a

liberal instruction, would henceforth comprise three essential

parts: 1. the sciences; 2. the humanities; 3. rhetoric and the

national literature. We see at once what is to be understood by

this last item; but the two others have need of some explanations.

The sciences are divided into two groups: those which are to be

mastered,--arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, chemistry,

biology, psychology; and the natural sciences, which should be

studied only superficially because they would overwhelm the memory

under the weight of too large a number of facts. Geography, which,

one does not know why, is included in the sciences, while history

is attached to the humanities, will complete the programme of

scientific studies.

As to the humanities, Mr. Bain preserves scarcely more than

the name while suppressing the thing; for in the curtailed and

disfigured domain which he persists in calling by this name,

he cuts off precisely that which has always been considered as

constituting its essence,--the study of the dead languages. He

excludes from it even the living languages, and that which he

still decorates with the fine title of humanities, is still

science,--moral science, it is true,--“history and sociology with

political economy and jurisprudence.”

A course in universal literature, but, be it understood, without

original texts, _might_ afterwards be added to this pretended

teaching of the humanities.

Two or three hours a week would be devoted parallelly, during the

whole course of study, which would last six years, to each of the

three departments of instruction which Mr. Bain thinks equally

important.

As to the real humanities, dead or living languages, they should no

longer be included in education save as optional and extra studies,

on the same basis as the accomplishments. And, appealing to the

future, Mr. Bain even predicts that “a day will come when it will

be found that this is still granting them too large a place in

education.”

Mr. Bain, then, gives all his preferences to scientific studies,

and his book might properly be entitled, not only _Education as a

Science_, but also _Science in Education_.

659. THEORETICAL ERRORS.--Mr. Bain reproaches letters with giving

the mind the habit of servility. By what singular revulsion of

thought can the liberal studies _par excellence_ be represented

as a school of intellectual servitude? It is rather to scientific

instruction that we may properly return the accusation of enslaving

the spirit. By their inexorable evidence and by their very

exactness, do not the sciences sometimes smother the originality

and the free flight of the imagination?

This defect, however, does not cut them off from a right to a

place, and to a large place, in the programme of intellectual

education. Let us accept with favor their alliance, let us admit

them to a certain degree of fellowship, but do not let us tolerate

their encroachments. In a word, the object of the sciences is

either pure abstractions or material realities. He who studies

mathematics and physics first acquires real knowledge of high

value; and, on the other hand, he strengthens his mind through

the habits engendered by the rigorous methods which the sciences

employ. We cheerfully grant to Mr. Bain that the sciences are at

the same time admirable sources of useful truths and valuable

instruments of mental discipline. By cultivating them we gain not

only the positive knowledge which they teach respecting the world,

but also the power, rigor, and exactness which they impose on their

adepts.

660. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE SCIENCES.--But the question is to know

whether the sciences, so useful and so necessary for enriching and

disciplining the mind, are also the best agents for training it.

The educator is not in the situation of the farmer who has only

two things to do,--to plow and sow the field which he cultivates.

The work of education is vast in another direction. It has to do

with developing the aptitudes or latent energies, that which the

philosophy of the day hardly allows us longer to call faculties,

but that which they re-establish under another name, that of the

unconscious forces of the soul; it has to do, not with laboring on

a soil almost entirely prepared by nature, but in great part with

creating the soil itself. Now, the sciences are indeed the seed

which it will be proper by and by to sow on the field, but they are

not the substance which nourishes and fertilizes it.

661. SENSUALISTIC TENDENCIES.--If we go to the bottom of Mr. Bain’s

thought and doctrine on the mind, we shall find the secret of his

ardent preference for the teaching of the sciences. His errors in

practical pedagogy proceed from theoretical errors on human nature.

For him, as for Locke, there are not, properly speaking,

intellectual forces independent of the facts which succeed one

another in the consciousness. Consequently, there is not an

education of the faculties. Memory or imagination, considered as a

distinct power, as an aptitude more or less happy, is but a word.

It is nothing apart from the recollections or the images which are

successively graven in the mind. For Mr. Bain, as for Locke, the

best education is that which places items of knowledge side by side

in the mind, which accumulates facts there, but not that which

seeks to enkindle in the soul a flame of intelligence.

That which also warps the theoretical views of Mr. Bain is that

he accords no independence, no individual life, to the mind; and

that for him, back of the facts of consciousness, there come to

view, without any intermedium, the cerebral organs. Now the brain

is developed of itself; it acquires fatally, with the progress

of years, more weight and more volume; it passes from the age of

concrete things to the age of abstractions. Hence a reduction,

an inevitable contraction, of the sphere of education. There is

nothing more to do than to let nature have her way, and to fill the

vase which she charges herself with constructing.

662. UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES.--Finally, to conclude this indication

of the general ideas which dominate and which mar the pedagogy of

Mr. Bain, let us observe that a positive and practical utility, a

vulgar utility, mingles too many of its inspirations with it. The

criterion of utility is sometimes applied to it with an artless

extravagance. Thus, in the languages, only those words should be

learned which occur the most often, and in the sciences, only the

parts which are of the most frequent use. Even in moral education,

as it is conceived by the English philosopher, are to be found, as

we might expect, these utilitarian and narrow views.

Would one believe, for example, that Mr. Bain makes the fear of the

penal code the mainspring of the teaching of virtue?[286] Here,

at least, we must acknowledge that science is insufficient. “To

pretend, for example, that physiology can teach us moderation in

the sexual appetite is to attribute to it a result which no science

has yet been able to give.” But must we count any more, as Mr. Bain

would have us, for example, on social influences and on personal

experience? In this truly experimental education in virtue, ethics

would be learned just as the mother tongue is learned, by use, by

the imitation of others; and moral instruction, properly so called,

would be a sort of grammar which is to rectify vicious practices.

663. FINAL JUDGMENT.--But our criticisms on the general tendencies

of Mr. Bain’s pedagogy subtract nothing from our admiration of

the sterling qualities of his _Education as a Science_. Doubtless

there would also be errors of detail to notice, or some particular

methods to discuss; for example, that of never doing more than

one thing at a time, or the propriety of first teaching to

children the history of their country. Mr. Bain forgets that

mythological history and sacred history, by their legendary and

fabulous character, offer a particular attraction to the childish

imagination, and are better adapted than history proper to infant

minds. But, aside from the portions which are debatable, how

many wise observations to gather on the different processes of

instruction, on the transition from the concrete to the abstract,

on the discretion which must be employed in object-lessons, the

use of which so easily degenerates into abuse! Even through its

absolute theories, _Education as a Science_ will render great

services; for, to illustrate the march of thought, nothing is so

valuable as opinions which are exclusive and sincere. It were even

desirable, if one did not fear to experiment on human souls, _in

anima sublimi_, that according to Mr. Bain’s plan, the experiment

should be tried of an education exclusively scientific.

664. AMERICAN EDUCATORS. CHANNING (1780-1842).--The general

fault of English pedagogy is its aristocratic character. For Mr.

Spencer and Mr. Bain, as for Locke, it is simply a question of

the education of a _gentleman_. It is in America, in the writings

of Channing and Horace Mann, that we must seek the elements of a

theory of democratic education, and of popular instruction.[287]

Channing, a Unitarian minister, associated religious sentiment and

philosophic reason, and desired that in theology itself everything

should issue in the supremacy of the human judgment. The most

interesting of his writings are the public lectures which he

gave in Boston in 1838, and the object of which is the education

one gives himself, and the elevation of the working classes. We

lack the space to give an analysis of these lectures, but a few

quotations will make known the general spirit of the American

reformer:--

“I am not discouraged by the objection that the laborer, if

encouraged to give time and strength to the elevation of his mind,

will starve himself and impoverish the country, when I consider the

energy, and the efficiency of Mind.”

“The highest force in the universe is Mind. This created

the heavens and earth. This has changed the wilderness into

fruitfulness, and linked distant countries in a beneficent ministry

to one another’s wants. It is not to brute force, to physical

strength, so much as to art, to skill, to intellectual and moral

energy, that men owe their mastery over the world. It is mind

which has conquered matter. To fear, then, that by calling forth

a people’s mind, we shall impoverish and starve them, is to be

frightened at a shadow.”

“It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with

superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are

in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us,

give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into

ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant

and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past

ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will

faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the

best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter

though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure

dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode

under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of

Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination

and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with

his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual

companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded

from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”

665. HORACE MANN (1796-1859).--Horace Mann is not a philosopher who

discusses education, but a politician who reformed and developed

the education of his country. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board

of Education, he opened schools, founded libraries, and pronounced

a great number of discourses, the best known of which is _The

Necessity of Education in a Republican Government_.

“When, then,” he often said, “will men give their thought to

infancy? We watch the seed which we confide to the earth, but we do

not concern ourselves with the human soul till the sun of youth has

set. Were it in my power, I would scatter books over all the earth

as men sow wheat on the plowed fields.”

Speaking to Americans, to working people, and to tradesmen, he made

apparent the positive advantages of instruction:--

“If to-morrow some one were to tell you that a coal mine had been

discovered which would pay ten per cent, you would all rush to

it; and yet there are men whom you let grovel in ignorance when

you might realize from forty to fifty per cent on them. You are

ever giving your thought to capital and to machines; but the first

machine is man, and the first capital, man, and you neglect him.”

But he also interested himself in the moral effects of education,

especially in a democratic society, where each citizen is a

sovereign:--

“The education which has already been given a people makes it

necessary to give them more. By instructing them, new powers have

been awakened in them, and this intellectual and moral energy

must be regulated. In this case we have not to do with mechanical

forces, which, once put in action, accomplish their purpose and

then stop. No; these are spiritual forces endowed with a principle

of life and of progress which nothing can quench.”

666. CONCLUSION.--The labors of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Bain, the

works of Channing and Mann, and others still, will contribute, we

hope, to prepare the definite solutions demanded by our times in

the matter of education. These solutions are important for the

security and the greatness of our country. More than ever it is

necessary that education become something else than an affair of

inspiration, abandoned to caprice and hazard, but that it be a

work of reflection. It is said that the future is uncertain, that

events are leading French society no one knows where, and that

our destinies are at the mercy of the most unforeseen storms. We

do not believe this, since it is within our power that it shall

be otherwise. There is a means, in fact, of assuring the future

of peoples, and this is to give them an intellectual and moral

education which purifies the soul and strengthens character. Do

not let us look for regeneration and progress from a sudden and

miraculous transformation; do not let us demand them even of the

immediate efficiency of such or such a political institution.

Everything here below is accomplished according to the laws of a

slow progression, by trifling and successive modifications. Just as

for the child there is no abridgment which allows us to suppress

the slow steps of the insensible growth which each year brings

forward, so for nations there is no other process than the action,

slow but sure, of a wise and vigorous education, for causing them

to pass from vice to virtue, from abasement to grandeur.

The partisans of evolution sometimes seem to announce to us the

near apparition of a race superior to our own, called to supplant

us, as we shall have supplanted the inferior races. One day or

another we shall be liable, it seems, to meet “at the angle of a

rock” the successor of the human race. We count but little on such

promises, and the coming of this hypothetical race of men, suddenly

evoked by a wave of the magic wand of natural selection, leaves us

very incredulous.

Happily, we know another means, a much surer process, for causing

to appear, not a strange race, until now unknown, but generations

of more worth than our own, which are superior to it in physical

force, as in qualities of mind or virtues of character. This means

is to establish, through reflection and reason, an education

better adapted to our destination; an education broader and more

complete, at once more severe and more liberal, since it will at

the same time exact more toil and permit more scope; in which the

child will learn to count more on himself; in which his indolence

will no longer be encouraged by accustoming him inopportunely to

invoke supernatural aid; in which instruction will no longer be

a formulary recited as lip-service, but an inner and profound

acquisition of the soul, in which the fear of the conscience

will be substituted for the other rules of conduct, and in which

thought and free reflection will no longer be distrusted; finally,

an education more scientific and more rational, because it will

neglect nothing which can develop a human soul and bring it into

likeness with its ideal. Now that education to which the future

belongs, notwithstanding the obstacles which the spirit of the past

will still stir up against it,--that education is not possible,

its laws cannot be established, its methods cannot be practised,

except on one condition; this is, that the psychology of the child

be written, and well written, and that reflection draw from this

psychology all the consequences which it permits.

[667. COMMENT ON MR. SPENCER’S EDUCATION.--Monsieur Compayré

might have emphasized his cautions. Read with caution, and with

a purpose to weigh the truth, Mr. Spencer’s _Education_ is

inspiring and wholesome; but it may be doubted whether there

has been written, since the _Émile_, a book on education which

is so well fitted to deceive an unwary reader by its rhetoric

and philosophic plausibility. The air of breadth and candor

with which the writer sets out is eminently prepossessing, and

the reader is almost obliged to assume that he is being led to

foregone conclusions. The first chapter, in particular, is a

piece of literary art, in which there is such a deft handling

of sentiment and pathos as to unfit the susceptible reader for

exercising his own critical judgment.

In this place I can only indicate in the briefest manner what

seem to be the fundamental errors contained in the book:--

1. Mr. Spencer does not distinguish between the _immediate_ and

the _mediate_ practical value of knowledges. We may admit with

him that science is of inestimable value to the human race; but

it does not follow by any means that every person must be versed

in science. As we need not own everything that is essential to

our comfort, so we need not have as a personal possession all the

knowledge that we need for guidance.

2. It is a very low conception of education that would limit its

function to adapting a man merely to that state in life into

which he chances to be born. The Bushman, the Red Indian, and

the accountant, are unfortunate illustrations of the province of

education. Often the highest function of education is to lift a

man out of his ancestral state.

3. That the value of a subject for guidance is the same as its

value for discipline, is true under only one assumption,--that

the Bushman is always to remain a Bushman, and the Red Indian

always a Red Indian, as by the new philosophy of course they

should. Practical teachers very well know that, as a rule, the

studies that are the most valuable for practical use are the

least valuable for discipline. Mr. Spencer quotes no better proof

of his assumption than “the beautiful economy of Nature.”

4. Mr. Spencer’s proposed education is sordid in its

utilitarianism. He is preoccupied with man as an instrument

rather than with a human being aspiring towards the highest type

of his kind. A liberal education should be preoccupied first with

the training of the man, then with the training of the instrument.

5. Mr. Spencer’s restatement of Condillac’s and Comte’s doctrine,

that individual education should be a repetition of civilization

_in petto_, is at best but a specious generalization. The

doctrine cannot be applied to practice, in any considerable

degree, if we would, and should not be, if we could, for it

ignores one essential factor in progress,--inheritance.

6. The part assigned to “Nature” in the work of education is so

overstrained as to be unnatural and absurd. Physical science has

long since discarded this myth of Nature personified. It is only

in educational science that this fiction is still employed to eke

out an argument.

7. The doctrine of consequences which underlies Mr. Spencer’s

system of moral education is applicable to but a limited number

of cases, or, if applied with thoroughness, is inhuman. Not even

all the fit would survive if they were not shielded from the

consequences of their acts by human sympathy and oversight.]

FOOTNOTES:

[277] J. P. Richter, better known under the name Jean Paul

(1763-1825), the author of a spirited and scholarly book, _Levana,

or the Doctrine of Education_, 1803.

[278] See _The Elements of Psychology, on the Principles of Beneke_

(London, 1871).

[279] The first French translation appeared in 1878.

[280] In this, as in several other instances, Monsieur Compayré

gives a summary of the author’s thought rather than an exact

quotation. (P.)

[281] As, historically, ornament precedes dress, on Mr. Spencer’s

main principle, it need not be till late in life that women dress

sensibly. Or ought not the genesis of dress in the individual to

follow the same order as the genesis of dress in the race? (P.)

[282] _Introduction to Social Science_, p. 390.

[283] So far as experience can testify, this is a pure assumption.

The most trifling injuries are often the most painful, and the most

serious the most painless. (P.)

[284] See the _Esprit de discipline dans l’éducation_, a memoir of

Gréard, published in the _Revue Pédagogique_, 1883, No. 11.

[285] By the “analytical problem” of education, Mr. Bain means the

determining of the education value of subjects. See _Education as

a Science_, Chapter V. (P.)

[286] We might dwell on Mr. Bain’s observations relative to

punishments. Here is what Gréard says of them: “Mr. Bain, with

infinite good sense and disciplinary tact, is much less concerned

with applying the rule than with the conditions according to which

it should be applied. On this point he enters into details full of

scruples. He does not hesitate to call to his aid the knowledge of

the masters of penal jurisprudence, and his recommendations, added

to those of Bentham, comprise not less than thirty articles.”

[287] There should be added to these the works of Swiss, Italian,

and French educators, particularly of Siciliani, and the original

and eminently suggestive studies of Bernard Perez.

APPENDIX.

A.

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

The two aims to be kept in view in the teaching of this subject

are _culture_ and _guidance_. The purpose should be to extend the

intellectual horizon of the teacher, or, to use Plato’s phrase, to

make him “the spectator of all time and all existence”; and, in the

second place, to furnish the teacher with a clew which will safely

conduct him through the mazes of systems, methods, and doctrines.

There is no other profession that has derived so little profit

from capitalized experiences; and there is no profession in which

culture and breadth are more necessary.

For securing the ends here proposed, it is recommended that a plan

somewhat like the following be pursued in the use of this volume:--

1. If there are three recitations a week, assign one chapter

for each of the first two recitations, _to be carefully and

thoughtfully read_, and require each pupil to select one special

topic to present and discuss when he is called upon in the

recitation; and for the _third_ recitation in each week, require

each pupil to select a topic from any part of the book which has

thus far been studied. The purpose of this plan is to bring before

the class, in sharp outline, the salient points of the subject;

and, at the same time, to create a sense of the organic unity of

the theme as a comprehensive whole. When there are more than three

recitations a week, only a part of a chapter need be assigned for

an advance lesson.

2. When the first survey of the subject has been made in the way

just suggested, a _review_ may be conducted as follows:--

(1.) _Biographical._ Following a chronological order, divide the

whole treatise into as many sections as there are recitations to be

devoted to this purpose, and require each pupil to make a careful

study of some educator, as Socrates, Montaigne, or Pestalozzi, and

to present this theme when called upon in recitation. When there

is opportunity, encourage pupils to amplify their themes with

information derived from other sources.

(2.) _Topical._ Require each pupil to select some doctrine, system,

or method, and to show, in a systematic way, its origin, progress,

and termination. In this review, encourage the critical spirit, and

make the recitation to consist, in part, of a free discussion of

principles and doctrines. The value of this subject for _guidance_

will appear in this part of the study.

(3.) _By Chapters._ Require each pupil to prepare a summary of some

chapter in the book, emphasizing the more important truths that

are taught in it, and showing the tendency or drift of educational

thought. The _culture_ value of the subject will appear in this

part of the study. By this mode of treatment, the subject can be

compassed, with good results, in twenty weeks.

3. Where no more than twelve or fourteen weeks can be given to this

subject, it is recommended that the following chapters be selected:

I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., X., XII., XIII., XVIII., XIX.,

XX., XXI., XXII.

For use in _Teachers’ Meetings_ held by superintendents, the

following chapters are suggested: II., III., V., VI., VII., X.,

XIII., XVIII., XX., XXII.

For use in _Teachers’ Reading Circles_, either of the above

selections will serve a good purpose.

B.

A SELECT LIST OF WORKS SUPPLEMENTARY TO “COMPAYRÉ’S HISTORY OF

PEDAGOGY.”

1. The Cyclopædia of Education. New York.

2. Buisson. Dictionnaire de Pédagogie. Parts 1-156. Paris.

3. Lindner. Handbuch der Erziehungskunde. Wien and Leipzig.

4. K. Schmidt. Die Geschichte der Pädagogik. Cöthen.

5. G. Compayré. Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l’Éducation

en France. Paris.

6. Barnard. German Teachers and Educational Reformers.

7. Barnard. French Teachers, Schools, and Pedagogy.

8. Barnard. English Teachers, Educators, and Promoters of

Education.

9. Barnard. American Teachers, Educators, and Benefactors of

Education.

10. Barnard. Pestalozzi and Swiss Pedagogy.

11. Biber. Pestalozzi and his Plan of Education. London.

12. Donaldson. Lectures on the History of Education. Edinburgh.

13. Krüsi. Pestalozzi: his Life, Work, and Influence. Cincinnati.

14. Lorenz. Life of Alcuin. London.

15. Mrs. Mann. Life of Horace Mann. Boston.

16. Meiklejohn. Dr. Andrew Bell. London.

17. Morley, J. Rousseau. London.

18. Mullinger. The Schools of Charles the Great. London.

19. Quick. Essays on Educational Reformers. Cincinnati.

20. Shuttleworth. Four Periods of Public Education. London.

21. Arnold. Higher Schools and Universities of Germany.

London.

22. Hart. German Universities. New York.

23. De Guimps. Histoire de Pestalozzi. Lausanne.

24. De Guimps. La Philosophie et la Pratique de l’Éducation.

Paris.

25. Meunier. Lutte du Principe Clérical et du Principe Laïque

dans l’Enseignement. Paris.

26. Gaufrés. Claude Baduel et la Réforme des Études au XVI^e

Siècle. Paris.

27. Bentham. Chrestomathia. London.

28. Drane. Christian Schools and Scholars. London.

29. Ascham. The Scholemaster. Notes by Mayor. London.

30. Locke. Thoughts concerning Education. Notes by Quick.

Cambridge.

31. Laurie. John Amos Comenius. Boston.

32. Lancelot. Narrative of a Tour to La Grande Chartreuse.

London.

33. Schimmelpenninck. Narrative of the Demolition of Port Royal.

London.

34. Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters on the Elementary Principles

of Education. London.

35. Spencer. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. N. Y.

36. Rousseau, Émile. Extracts. Boston.

37. Blackie. Four Phases of Morals. N. Y.

38. Aristotle. The Politics and Economics. London.

39. Craik. The State in its Relation to Education. London.

40. Cousin. Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia.

41. Gill. Systems of Education. Boston.

42. Souquet. Les Ecrivains Pédagogues du XVI^e Siècle. Paris.

43. Mann. Lectures on Education. Boston.

44. Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory. London.

45. Plato. The Republic and the Laws. London.

46. Xenophon. The Memorabilia of Socrates. N. Y.

47. Plutarch. Morals. Boston.

48. MacAlister. Montaigne on Education. Boston.

49. Pestalozzi. Leonard and Gertrude. Boston.

50. Necker de Saussure. Éducation Progressive. Paris.

51. Cochin. Pestalozzi: sa Vie, ses Œuvres, ses Méthodes.

Paris.

52. Compayré. Cours de Pédagogie. Paris.

53. Milton. Tractate on Education. Cambridge.

54. Fénelon. Fables. Paris.

55. Fénelon. The Education of a Daughter. Dublin.

56. Martin. Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs. Paris.

57. Jacotot. Enseignement Universel. Paris.

58. Adams. The Free School System of the United States.

London.

59. Conrad. The German Universities for the last Fifty Years.

Glasgow.

60. Capes. University Life in Ancient Athens. N. Y.

61. Mahaffy. Old Greek Education.

62. Chassiotis. L’Instruction Publique chez les Grecs. Paris.

63. Spiers. School System of the Talmud. London.

64. Simon. L’Éducation et l’Instruction des Enfants chez les

Anciens Juifs. Paris.

65. Edgeworth. Practical Education. N. Y.

NOTE.--For other supplementary works, and for a more complete

description of the books in the above list, consult the

Bibliography of G. Stanley Hall (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.).

INDEX.

Abelard, 75.

Academy, 22; French, 219, 301, 386.

Achilles, 46.

Activity, 57, 72, 92, 93, 171, 191, 207, 461, 476;

categories of, 542;

the divine, 454;

industrial, 544.

Adalberic, 68.

Adaptation, 27, 31, 79, 90, 92, 158, 200, 294, 323, 329, 354, 461,

530, 553.

_Adèle_ and _Théodore_, of Madame de Genlis, 480.

Age, for public instruction, 11, 14, 15, 19, 31, 32, 34, 38, 49, 50,

55, 287, 323, 347, 348.

Agricola, Rudolph, 87.

Agriculture, 420.

Ahriman, 14.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Council of, 73.

Alcuin, 72.

Alexander, 11, 36, 294.

_Alexander_, 118.

Alfred the Great, 73.

_All is in All_, 527.

Amusements, 33, 94, 96, 98, 118, 119, 146, 161, 248, 294, 306, 348,

458, 460.

Amyot, 53, 54.

Analysis, 22, 23, 32, 42, 96, 188, 284, 314, 558.

Anselm, Saint, 76, 77, 119.

Antiquity, education in, 1-16, 18, 37, 320.

Arabic, 102.

Arabs, 77.

Arbogast, 393, 394.

Argovia, 418, 438.

Argument, 19, 52, 74, 80, 145.

Aristophanes, 20, 87.

Aristotle, 10, 11, 22, 42, 46, 52, 59, 66, 74, 321;

plan of education, 36-41;

of music, 20, 39.

Arithmetic, 76, 80, 98, 114, 129, 205, 268, 269, 441;

moral, 471.

Arnauld, 154;

_General Grammar_, 155.

Art, 30, 31, 60, 116, 179, 309, 310, 327, 546;

of education, 22, 39, 60, 85, 91, 122, 310, 476;

industrial, 331, 351, 384, 528, 545;

of creating thought, 23, 91, 156, 157, 315, 316, 471.

Artisans, 15, 28, 40, 98, 118, 134, 135, 209, 300, 565.

Arts, Faculty of, 233, 234, 321, 341, 512;

the Seven Liberal, 75, 119.

Asceticism, 4, 63, 65, 66, 160, 161, 259, 260.

Assembly, Constituent, 371, 372, 390, 395;

Legislative, 371, 373, 390;

National, 369, 391.

Assistant, 10, 131, 267, 327, 424.

Astronomy, 6, 11, 32, 71, 74, 76, 98, 129, 157, 205.

Athens, education at, 17, 40, 43.

_Atlantic Monthly_, 310.

d’Aubigné, 53.

Augustine, Saint, 47, 64, 68, 71, 219, 225.

Augustus, 46, 47.

Aurelius, Marcus, 53, 58.

Austria, 465.

Authority, 15, 74, 81, 110, 122, 136, 172, 191, 264, 309, 518, 528,

532;

basis of, 13, 32, 74, 149, 161.

Auxerre, 342.

Avignon, 139, 263.

Bacon, 32, 123, 124, 133, 136, 192, 211.

Bain, 124, 194, 538, 556-563;

errors of, 559-563.

Barraud, 434.

Barrère, 397.

Barrière, 485.

Basedow, 414.

Basil, Saint, 64.

Bausset, Cardinal de, 178.

Bauzen, 537.

Beauty, 30, 31, 84, 98, 546.

Beauvilliers, 165, 166.

Beckx, 142, 145.

Belief, 74, 143, 191, 304, 381.

Bell, Andrew, 6, 513-517.

_Belles-lettres_, 113, 150, 152, 236, 321, 322, 324, 404.

Benedict, Saint, 69.

Benedictines, 68, 76, 279.

Bentham, _Chrestomathia_, 100, 519, 562.

Berlin, 451, 464.

Bernardin de Saint Pierre, 394.

Bersot, 149, 534.

Bert, Paul, 395.

Berthollet, 405.

Burgdorf, 419, 426, 433, 456, 457.

Bérulle, 150.

Bias, 32.

Bible, 7, 65, 81, 86, 99, 113, 120, 248, 304, 324, 342, 420.

Billom, College of, 141.

Bills, Educational, 390-411, 509-512, 519-525.

Birr, 438.

Blackie, _Four Phases of Morals_, 21.

Blankenburg, 457, 463.

Boarding-schools, 282, 327, 397, 433, 485.

Body, 28, 29, 33, 38, 65, 94, 196-199, 292-315;

exercises for, 18, 19, 28, 94, 135, 289-292.

Bœotia, 53.

Bohemia, 125.

Boileau, 182, 219, 243.

Bonneval, 283.

_Book for Mothers_, Pestalozzi’s, 431.

Books, 70, 86, 105, 132, 240, 298, 369, 393, 528;

use of, 106, 107, 218, 298, 352, 429, 441, 516, 564.

Bossuet, 141, 182-185, 243.

Boufflers, Marquis de, 148.

Bouquier, 379, 391, 400;

Law of, 400, 401.

Bourgogne, 366;

Duke of, 166, 177-182.

Boys, education of, 6, 8, 34, 48, 54, 94, 114, 284-302, 398.

Boze, de, 243.

Brahmins, 4, 5.

Bréal, Michel, 113, 343, 534.

Bretagne, 344.

Brethren of Saint Charles, 255.

Brethren of the Christian Schools, 112, 138, 147, 253-277, 353, 365,

513, 515.

Brinon, Madame de, 228.

Browning, 54.

Brugg, 418, 438.

Buddha, 4.

Buisson, _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, 13, 130, 369.

“Bureau of Correspondence,” 358.

Burnier, 163.

Burnouf, _Histoire du Bouddhisme_, 5.

Buss, 428.

Cabanis, 369.

Cabet, 527.

Cabinet, school, 385.

_Cabinet of du Mas_, 239.

Cadet, 246.

Cæsar, 51, 106.

Cæsar de Bus, 139.

Cajet, Dom Joseph, 280.

Calvin, 113.

Cambridge, University of, 77.

Campan, Madame, 485-487.

Campe, 415.

Campus Martius, 44.

Carnot, 501, 521, 524.

Carré, 153.

Carthage, 105.

Caste, 2, 14, 15, 16, 28, 33, 42, 143, 256, 564.

Casuistry, 65, 67, 343.

Catechism, 44, 81, 113, 272, 321, 338, 364.

Catherine II., of Russia, 320.

Catholicism, 139, 253-277.

Cavern, Plato’s, 32.

Centralization, 358, 361, 386, 395, 396, 512;

opposed, 372.

Central Schools, 407.

Ceremonies, 12, 30, 36, 146, 199, 287, 393.

Chaillot, 504.

Chaldee, 95.

Chance, 328, 329.

Channing, 59, 476, 563-565.

Character, 490, 497.

Charicles, 25.

Charity, 37, 61, 281;

condemned, 29, 153.

Charlemagne, 71-73, 106.

Charles the Bold, 68, 73.

Charron, _Wisdom_, 110.

Chastanier, 263.

Chateaubriand, 245, 511.

Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, 79.

Child, 38, 39, 46, 79, 169, 195, 196;

age for study, 11, 39, 49, 287;

development of, 31, 38, 50, 195, 455, 456, 498;

education of, 46, 48, 80, 86, 103, 107, 122, 129, 153, 169, 237,

240, 284-304, 318, 420, 442, 501-504, 520-525;

etiquette, 88, 89, 199, 270;

inclination of, 3, 33, 79, 159, 169, 207, 257, 291, 333, 334, 346,

454, 460, 492, 547, 549;

indulgence of, 50, 172, 173, 206, 551;

moral protection of, 39, 49, 50, 78, 88, 173, 248, 470-475;

punishment of, 6, 7, 12, 33, 76, 77, 78, 102, 271-276, 551;

the property of the State, 27, 397, 398.

Chinese, 11-13;

civil service of, 16.

_Chriæ_, 51.

Christian Doctrine, The Order of the, 139.

Christianity, 8, 61, 116, 174, 228, 248, 304.