the needful preparation is still-science. And for purposes of discipline-intellectual, moral, religious-the most efficient study is, once more-science."

The soul-shrivelling worship of the merely useful betrays itself especially in Spencer's brutal condemnation of the soul-life of the race-its finer sympathies and sensibilities-its inner visions and its holy aspirations. "However,fully we may admit," he says, "that extensive acquaintance with modern languages is a valuable accomplishment, which through reading, conversation, and travel aids in giving a certain finish, it by no means follows that this result is rightly purchased at the cost of that vitally important knowledge sacrificed to it. Supposing it true that classical education conduces to elegance and correctness of style, it cannot be said that elegance and correctness of style are comparable in importance to familiarity with the principles that should guide the rearing of children. Grant that the taste may be greatly improved by reading all the poetry in extinct languages, yet it is not to be inferred that such improvement of taste is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with the laws of health. Accomplishments, the fine arts, belles-lettres, and all those things which, as we say, constitute the efflorescence of civilization should be wholly subordinate to that knowledge and discipline in which civilization rests. As they occupy the leisure part of life, so they should occupy the leisure part of education."

As a reply to these conclusions of Spencer it will probably be sufficient to call the reader's attention to the fact that in a well-balanced curriculum the things which Spencer compares should not, and really cannot, exclude each other, and that what Spencer chooses

to call the leisure part of life is often the part that makes life really worth living. To this reflection we ought to add the fact, widely recognized among those who stop long enough to think about it, that an education consisting almost wholly of scientific pursuits, as in Spencer's own case, and as Darwin sadly recognized in himself, cannot satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts of the soul.

Intellectual Education.-In his second chapter Spencer, as we might expect from his interest in psychology, contends for scientific pedagogy. In the course of the chapter he devotes himself with keen insight to principles, most of which indeed have become familiar to us through Comenius, Pestalozzi, and other illustrious educational reformers.

He takes up the following principles in order: (1) In teaching we should proceed from the simple to the complex, (2) from the concrete to the abstract. (3) The genesis of knowledge must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. (4) Adequate particulars should pave the way for generalization, or theory should follow practice. (5) Increase of mental power comes only through what the pupil can be induced to do for himself, or self-activity is the basis of education. (6) Pleasurable excitement on the part of the student must be the criterion of any educational method. We do violence to nature when we try to substitute force for the pupil's own initiative.

The third and the last of these principles call for

comment.

In the contention that the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race, Spencer, like Ziller

and Rein, presses Herbart's principle of correlation to extremes. All these disciples of Herbart assume that the biological theory of recapitulation holds in mental as well as in physical development. This conclusion breaks down at many points under the hammer of overwhelming proof. It is the glory of twentiethcentury educational practice to save the individual from the despotic recapitulation which this theory considers inevitable, and the success with which the means to this end have been employed, namely, the substitution of superior environment in the redemption of the individual, has proved far greater than that of Ziller and Rein in their effort to build up a recapitulating curriculum.

Spencer devotes the major part of his second chapter to proofs confirming Herbart's celebrated doctrine of pleasurable excitement through apperceptive instruction and the conclusion that the self-activity to which such pleasurable excitement provokes the mind is the surest way to increase of mental power. Inasmuch as apperceptive instruction makes that selection of materials through which the individual may be saved from despotic recapitulation of race-development possible, Spencer apparently breaks the force of his argument in favor of the recapitulation theory by those in favor of apperceptive correlation.

Moral Education.-Relying as wholly on his inductive method of reaching conclusions in the moral world as he does in the world of pure intellect, Spencer, as we might expect from his less emotional temperament, rejects the extreme individualism of Rousseau's theory of morals. Nevertheless, ignoring the claims of Christian ethics, and relying solely on his evolutionistic psy

chology, he adopted Rousseau's theory of natural consequences in moral discipline, and defends it with a captivating array of illustrative proofs that seem irresistible until the reader matches his own experience and his own observations against Spencer's illustrations, and then discovers that nature is often too severe and still more often too slow in the consequences with which she punishes infractions of her laws. While, for example, it is quite true, as Spencer points out, that the child who "neglects to get ready in time for a walk," and is therefore left at home, learns the necessary moral lesson effectively without the use of artificial force, and is compelled to admit the justice of the penalty, thus remaining on terms of good-will toward those who inflict the corrective, it is equally and startlingly true that if an innocent child plays with fire it may be injured for life, or even burned to death, in which case the punishment, if it could be prevented, must be considered simply brutal, and without justification. In other cases, as in the formation of bad habits, such as those of appropriating property that does not belong to the child, or smoking cigarettes, or impure thoughts, the first consequences do not serve as a sufficient warning against fearful final effects.

Notwithstanding the serious weakness of this chapter, we owe Spencer our thanks for opposing the harsh methods of discipline so common in his days, and in other days, and for his contention that the only mode of discipline which produces self-governing men and women is reasonable discipline, which in most cases really is a natural discipline. "Bear constantly in mind," says Spencer, "the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being,

not to produce a being to be governed by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by and by to be freemen, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye."

Physical Education.-In the last chapter of his book Spencer calls the attention of parents and teachers to the great importance of caring for the body. Although his arguments are still uncompromisingly utilitarian, he often rises to the real moral heights of his own life. Thus, for example, he believes with Huxley that a man ought to be "a good animal," evidently for utilitarian reasons, but in the same breath urges that "health is a duty." In the same vein he finds fault with the fathers of England for being more concerned about the welfare of their horses and cattle than about the welfare of their children. "Men's habitual words and acts," says Spencer, "imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to nature's dictates they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences on their dependents and on future generations are often as great as those caused by crime, yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a purely bodily transgression is recognized, but none appears to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily transgression. The fact is that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins."