remarked upon the exaggerated hopes commonly built upon education.
With the courage that is characteristic of him, he went counter to a
current of opinion which was then running with perhaps its maximum
force. He said that the belief in the efficacy of education to remold
society had taken so strong a hold of the modern world that nothing
but disappointment would avail to modify it. This was in the year
1872; since then the disappointment has in a measure come, and many
are prepared to accept his views to-day, who, twenty-seven years ago,
thought they proceeded from a mind fundamentally out of sympathy with
modern progress. Facts indeed are accumulating from year to year to
prove the soundness of the philosopher's contention that "cognition
does not produce action," and that a great variety of knowledge may be
introduced into the mind without in the least inclining the individual
to higher modes of conduct.
We are reminded of Mr. Spencer's line of argument by an article lately
published in the London Spectator, entitled Influence on the Young.
The writer sees clearly that enthusiastic educationists undertake far
more than they can perform. "The character forms itself," he says,
"assimilating nutriment or detriment, as it were, from the air, which
the parents or teachers, for all their pains, can in no way change."
There seems indeed to be in the young, he remarks, a distinct tendency
to resist influence. Father and son will be opposed in politics; very
pious people too often find, to their sorrow, their children growing
up far otherwise than they could wish. The man who is very settled in
his habits is as like as not to have a boy who can not be persuaded to
take a serious view of life. The most unexceptionable home lessons
seem to be of no avail against the attractive power of light
companions. Evidently, Nature is at work in ways that men can not
control. If there is a law of "recoil," as the writer in the Spectator
hints, we may be pretty sure it serves some good purpose. It
introduces, we can see at once, a diversity which makes for the
progress, and perhaps also for the stability, of society. Two
practical questions, however, suggest themselves: (1) What can we
reasonably hope from education? and (2) What can we do to make a
wholesome _milieu_ for the rising generation?
With regard to education, it is evident that we can not know the best
it can do until it has been reduced to a science--until, that is to
say, as a result of the joint labors of practical educators and
psychologists, we can claim to possess a reasonable degree of
certainty as to the best arrangement and sequence of studies and the
best methods of stimulating the mind and imparting knowledge. Upon
these important questions there is still considerable diversity of
opinion. Some educators think we should be very sparing of
abstractions in the instruction of younger pupils. Others are of a
contrary opinion. Professor Baldwin, for example, in his little work
on The Mind, says that "grammar is one of the very best of
primary-school subjects." He also recommends mathematics. These are
questions which, it seems to us, admit of being finally settled.
Allowance must of course be made for the varying capacities of
individual children, but this need not stand in the way of the
establishment of some general doctrine as to the law of development of
the human mind. We shall then further require a true theory of method
in education, so that we may know by what means the best results in
the imparting of knowledge and the development of the capacities of
the individual mind may be obtained. Assuming that these vantage
points have been gained, education should be for every mind an
eminently healthful and invigorating process, which is more than can
be said for the forms of education that have prevailed in the past.
These, while developing certain faculties, have, to a great extent,
stunted others--have indeed, in too many cases, fatally impaired the
natural powers of the mind. A notable paper, which appeared in the
first number of this magazine, was one by the late Dr. Carpenter on
The Artificial Cultivation of Stupidity in Schools. Professor Baldwin,
in the work already cited, seems to be of the opinion that the process
of cultivating stupidity, or at least mental shiftlessness, is in full
blast to-day in many of our secondary schools owing to the prominence
given to language studies. The science of education must at least put
an end to this, and insure that the youths who are committed to the
public schools shall not be subjected to any mind-destroying
exercises. We can hope, however, that it will do much more. The mind,
like the body, grows by what it feeds upon; and it is hard to conceive
that suitable kinds of knowledge could be imparted in a natural
manner, so as to awaken interest and develop the perceptive and
reasoning powers, without at least preparing the mind for the
reception of right sentiments.
So much the science of education, when it is fairly established, may
reasonably be expected to do. It will deal with the mind upon true
hygienic principles. There remains the more serious question how such
a moral atmosphere can be created as will incline the young to take a
right view of knowledge and its uses. Knowledge, it is hardly
necessary to say, is power, just as money is power; and it is quite as
needful that the idea of social service should be associated with the
one as with the other. The best social service which, perhaps,
any man can render is to give to the world the example of high
disinterestedness and general nobility of character; and knowledge
should be valued not as conferring individual distinction, but
according as it expands and liberalizes the mind. The poet Coleridge
has said with some truth that
"Fancy is the power
That first unsensualizes the dark mind,
Giving it new delights; and bids it swell
With wild activity; and peopling air,
By obscure fears of beings invisible,
Emancipates it from the grosser thrall
Of the present impulse, teaching self-control,
Till Superstition with unconscious hand
Seat Reason on her throne."
The mind having been "unsensualized," the next step is to moralize
and humanize it, otherwise Reason on her throne may act not much more
wisely than other monarchs have done. The classic example of the
worship of reason is not reassuring as to the infallibility of the
goddess. The question, then, as to how intellectual education and the
education of the moral sentiments may go hand in hand is one that
comes home to every member of the community. We all help to make the
moral atmosphere and create the moral ideals of our time; and there is
no use in looking for high standards in our colleges and other
institutions of learning if we have low standards in our homes. The
youth who hears nothing talked of at home but money is not likely to
take much interest in instruction that does not bear directly on the
question of making money. The youth who hears money spoken of in the
home circle simply as a means of personal enjoyment and glorification
will need something more than a few lectures on political or social
economy to make him take a different view of it. We may employ
excellent men and women as teachers, but their success from a moral
point of view will always be limited by the general tone of the
community.
It is evident, then, that no very special directions can be given for
solving the problem with which we are concerned. Still, the posing of
the problem and the indication of the conditions on which its solution
depends may awaken in a few minds a new sense of their responsibility
in the matter, and it is a gain for even one to go over to the right
side. It would be quite as easy for _the whole_ of society to live on
a somewhat higher plane as it is for it to live on its present plane.
It would simply mean that the average man would treat the average man
a little better than he does now: whatever one gave he would thus get
in return, and the burdens which are always associated with mutual
distrust would be proportionately lightened.
The philosopher whom we began by quoting has indicated ways in which
the craze for legislative shortcuts is working against the moral
improvement of society. He holds that parental responsibility has been
seriously impaired by legislative encroachments in the matter of
education and otherwise. Book learning has become to the modern world
a kind of fetich; and minds that ought to be in contact with the facts
of life are stupefied, and so far prevented from getting their normal
moral growth by being drilled in studies that bring no real profit. We
can not bear the idea that one of our human brethren should not be
able to read and write; but, provided he possesses these
accomplishments, we ask no questions as to what use he makes of them.
We have before us a police description of a criminal who graduated at
one of the most celebrated universities on the Continent, who studied
afterward for the Church, who was for several years an elder, and who
possesses--so we are distinctly informed--fine literary tastes. The
gentleman with all these advantages is a fugitive from justice. With
all his knowledge and accomplishments he got no hold of the principles
of right conduct, and--there are not a few like him. We need not only
a science of education, but a science of government, the most valuable
part of which will probably be that which shows us with demonstrative
force what things government ought to leave alone. It is quite
possible we should find the moral atmosphere materially improving if
only the natural reactions between the individual and his environment
were not interfered with. The course of Nature, we may feel assured,
provides not less for moral than for mental growth, and if either
process is defectively carried on we may safely attribute it to some
ill-advised attempt we are making to improve on natural institutions.
Science has done much for the world in the past, but it has yet to do
much more. It will yet give us a light to our feet in matters
educational and political, and will liberate us from many of the yokes
and trammels we have foolishly imposed upon ourselves. Mankind will
then look into the face of Nature and see in it a new beneficence and
brighter promises for the future of the race.
_THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION AT COLUMBUS._
A fairly good attendance, with an unusually large proportion of men
prominent in science, and most cordial welcome and painstaking care of
the members by the Ohio State University and the citizens of Columbus,
combined to make the forty-eighth annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science a most enjoyable and
instructive one. The two features of the meeting which seem to deserve
the most attention are: First, the tendency which was shown in every
section to direct the papers and discussions to practical subjects, so
that all could participate in the proceedings and each member feel
justified in having a word to say in them; and, secondly, the perfect
cordiality with which the association was received and the assiduous
attention with which it was taken care of by the local committee. The
smaller and apparently less important details, but at the same time
those which so largely determine one's comfort in a strange community,
were thoughtfully arranged, and to this alone much of the success of
the meeting was due. The numerous excursions were not only exceedingly
enjoyable, but were arranged in every case primarily for their
instructive and scientific features, and an Easterner, at any rate,
could not take any of them without learning something. Another feature
of the meeting that was especially satisfactory was the possibility it
afforded for the younger workers in science to meet their elders, who
had hitherto led the way--who were present, as we have already said,
in larger proportion than usual. The importance of this feature, as
President Orton pointed out in these pages a few months ago, can not
be overestimated. The instruction and encouragement which a new worker
in the scientific field gains from a personal acquaintance with the
older men who have already achieved success and reputation in his
branch of science are obvious enough. With the increasing
specialization which modern research is making absolutely unavoidable,
the social feature of the annual gathering of such a company of
scientists is coming to be its most important function. A slight
extension of it might very readily lead to the adoption of a specific
policy by the several sections of devoting at least a part of their
time to such a general statement of what has been accomplished in
their department or to some especially important work of general
interest that some of the members have been engaged in as would be
most instructive to the members of the other sections. In the earlier
meetings of the association the sectional chairmen often made such
presentations in their stated addresses, but as times and men have
changed, the idea has been departed from and this feature has become
an exceptional one. If it could be restored, in a modified if not an
identical form, and made a regular part of the programme of at least
one of the sections at each meeting, the interest would be greatly
enhanced, and in this way the chemist, the geologist, the botanist,
and the others could be given regularly an authoritative account of
what is being done in the other branches of science, and an important
step would be taken toward doing away with the unfortunate narrowing
influence which special scientific work is too apt to exercise.
The fixing of the last week in June as the time for holding the next
meeting of the association, which is to be in New York, is a departure
from recent practice as to date, but, aside from the special reason
for it in this particular case--the probability that many of the
members will be at the Paris Exposition during the following
August--the experiment seems a desirable one because of the almost
invariably excessive heat to which August meetings are exposed.
Scientific Literature.
SPECIAL BOOKS.
Evidences are apparent in many quarters of a reaction against the
headlong rush toward aggression and territorial aggrandizement in
which the American people have allowed themselves to be carried away.
For a time the lovers of the Constitution of the United States as the
fathers of the republic left it and Lincoln glorified it were
bewildered, stunned by the revolution suddenly precipitated upon us
from Washington, while the people at large seemed to be wild with
enthusiasm for they knew not what, and men suffered themselves to be
led--they knew not whither. Very slowly the true patriots recovered
their voices, and signs appear that the people are at last getting
into a mood to listen to reason. President _David Starr Jordan's
Imperial Democracy_[49] comes very opportunely, therefore, to call to
the minds of those who can be induced to think some of the forgotten
principles of American policy, and to depict, in the terse, incisive
style of which the author is master, the true nature and bearing of
those iniquitous proceedings to which the American people, betrayed by
treacherous leaders, have allowed themselves to become a party.
President Jordan was one of the first who dared, in this matter, to
make a public protest against this scheme of aggression. His first
address on the subject--Lest we Forget--delivered to the graduating
class of Leland Stanford University, May 25, 1898, was separated only
a few days in time from Prof. Charles Eliot Norton's exposure of the
reversal of all our most cherished traditions and habits which the
precipitation of the war with Spain had brought about. The two men
must share the honor of leadership in the awakening movement. In this
address President Jordan gives a true definition of patriotism as "the
will to serve one's country; to make one's country better worth
saving"--not the shrilling of the mob, or trampling on the Spanish
flag, or twisting the lion's tail. Even so early he foresaw the
darkness of the future we were bringing upon ourselves, and said: "The
crisis comes when the war is over. What then? Our question is not what
we shall do with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It is what
these prizes will do to us." This, with the wickedness of the whole
business, is the burden of most of the other papers in the volume. In
the paper on Imperial Expansion we are told of three "world crises"
in our history when we were confronted with momentous questions. The
first was after the Revolution. The second came through the growth of
slavery. The third is upon us now. "It is not the conquest of Spain,
not the disposition of the spoils of victory which first concerns us.
It is the spirit that lies behind it. Shall our armies go where our
institutions can not? Shall territorial expansion take the place of
democratic freedom? Shall our invasion of the Orient be merely an
incident, an accident of a war of knight-errantry, temporary and
exceptional? Or is it to mark a new policy--the reversion from America
to Europe, from democracy to imperialism?" President Jordan has an
answer to the question, What are we to do in the shape affairs have
assumed? The right thing would be "to recognize the independence of
the Philippines, under American protection, and to lend them our army
and navy and our wisest counselors; not our politicians, but our
jurists, our teachers, with foresters, electricians, manufacturers,
mining engineers, and experts in the various industries.... The only
sensible thing to do would be to pull out some dark night and escape
from the great problem of the Orient as suddenly and as dramatically
as we got into it." Yet President Jordan recognizes that some great
changes in our system are inevitable, and belong to the course of
natural progress. They must not be shirked, but should be met
manfully, soberly, with open eyes. A paper on Colonial Lessons of
Alaska presents as an object lesson the muss we have made with
colonial government in that Territory.
[Footnote 49: Imperial Democracy. A Study of the Relation of
Government by the People, Equality before the Law, and other
Tenets of Democracy, to the Demands of a Vigorous Foreign Policy,
and other Demands of Imperial Dominion. By David Starr Jordan.
New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 293. Price, $1.50.]
* * * * *
Mr. _A. H. Keane's Man Past and Present_[50] is a part fulfillment of
a promise held out in his Ethnology, the first volume of the Cambridge
Geographical Series, that it might be followed by another dealing more
systematically with the primary divisions of mankind. In it the "four
varietal divisions" of man over the globe are treated more in detail,
with the primary view of establishing their independent specialization
in their several geographical zones, and of elucidating the difficult
questions associated with the origins and interrelations of the chief
subgroups. The work consequently deals to a large extent with the
prehistoric period, when the peoples had already been fully
constituted in their primeval homes and had begun their subsequent
developments and migratory movements. The author has further sought to
elucidate those general principles which are concerned with the
psychic unity, the social institutions, and religious ideas of
primitive and later peoples. The two principles, already insisted upon
in the Ethnology, of the specific unity of all existing varieties of
the human family and the dispersion of their generalized precursors
over the whole world in Pleistocene times are borne in view
throughout. Subsequent to this dispersion, the four primary divisions
of man have each had its Pleistocene ancestor, from whom each has
sprung independently and divergently by continuous adaptation to their
several environments. Great light is believed to have been thrown on
the character of the earliest men by the discovery of the
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, and this is supplemented as to the earliest
acquirements by Dr. Noetling's discovery, in 1894, of the works of
Pliocene man in upper Burmah. The deductions made from these
discoveries strengthen the view Mr. Keane has always advocated, that
man began to spread over the globe after he had acquired the erect
posture, but while in other physical and in mental respects he still
did not greatly differ from his nearest of kin. As to the age when
this development was taking place, agreement is expressed with Major
Powell's remark that the natural history of early man becomes more and
more a geological and not merely an anthropological problem. The human
varieties are shown to be, like other species, the outcome of their
environments, and all sudden changes of those environments are
disastrous. In both hemispheres the isocultural bands follow the
isothermal lines in all their deflections--temperate regions being
favorable, and tropical and severe ones unfavorable, to development.
Of the metal ages, the existence of a true copper age has been placed
beyond reasonable doubt. The passage from one metal to another was
slow and progressive. In art the earliest drawings were natural and
vital. The apparent inferiority of the drawings of the metal period to
those of the cave dwellers and of the present Bushmen is due to the
later art having been reduced to conventions. The development of
alphabetical writing from pictographs is briefly sketched. Thus light
is sought from all quarters in dealing with the questions of the book,
and due weight is given to all available data--physical and mental
characters, usages, religion, speech, cultural features, history, and
geographical range. The general discussion of these leading principles
is brief but clear and comprehensive. The bulk of the volume,
following them, is occupied with the detailed and minute studies of
the four main groups of mankind--the Negro, Mongol, American Indian,
and Caucasic--and their subgroups, the discussion of each being
preceded by a conspectus showing its Primeval Home, Present Range,
Physical Characters, Mental Characters (Temperament, Speech, Religion,
and Culture), and Main Divisions. The text is full, clear, good
reading, instructive and suggestive, and in it the author has sought
to make the volume a trustworthy book of reference on the multifarious
subjects dealt with.
[Footnote 50: Man Past and Present. By A. H. Keane, F. R. G. S.
(Cambridge Geographical Series). Cambridge, England: At the
University Press. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 584.
Price, $3.]
GENERAL NOTICES.
The fact that Mr. _Charles A. Dana_ stood in close personal relations
with Secretary Stanton and was officially associated with him during a
considerable period of the war for the Union, and was also
incidentally brought near Mr. Lincoln, gives whatever he may relate
concerning the events of that period somewhat the air of a revelation
from the inside. Accordingly, we naturally expect to find things
narrated in his _Recollections of the Civil War_[51] that could not be
told as well by any one else. The account given in the book relates to
events in which the author was personally concerned. Mr. Dana had been
associated with Horace Greeley in the editorial management of the New
York Tribune for fifteen years, when, in April, 1862, Mr. Greeley
invited him to resign. No reason was given or asked for the
separation, and no explicit statement of a reason was needed. Mr.
Greeley, having expressed in the beginning his willingness to let the
secessionist "wayward-sister" States go in peace, was in favor of
peace; Mr. Dana was for vigorous war. A correspondence was opened
between him and Mr. Stanton in reference to public matters shortly
after Mr. Stanton went into the War Department. Then Mr. Dana was
intrusted with special commissions that carried him to the front and
brought him in contact with the leaders of the army; and finally, in
1863, was appointed Assistant Secretary of War, an office he filled
till the end of the contest. His narrative deals as the story of one
having knowledge with questions of policy, with the critical phases of
the hard conflict, with the perplexities and anxieties of the men
charged with responsibilities, with stirring scenes in the councils
at the Capitol and in battle at the front, and with personal incidents
of the men whose names the nation loves and delights to honor. All is
related in the straightforward, fluent style, touching only the facts,
of a writer who has a story to tell and makes it his business to tell
it. The result of the reading of the book is to arouse a new
appreciation of the abilities and virtues of those great men in their
various walks of civil, political, and military life, who took our
country through its supreme trial.