effect of the national character; and, accordingly, the history of education affords the only ready and perfect key to the history of the human race, and of each nation in it-an unfailing standard for estimating its advance or retreat upon the line of human progress."

VARIOUS EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES.-It should not be forgotten that, apart from school training, the educational agencies of life are varied and potent. The most important, perhaps, of all educational agencies is the family. It is in the home that the child learns its native language, trains its senses, and acquires the elements of science. It is there that its habits and character are formed in large measure before it passes under the care of special teachers. The social life in which youth is spent is, with its countless interests and activities, a formative influence of great strength. Individual culture is irresistibly promoted by a refined social life, as it is almost irremediably hindered by an environment of ignorance. At the present time the press is an educator of tremendous power. In tracing the influence of schools we should not lose sight of the various educative influences of social environment.

RELIGION AND EDUCATION.-Religion—that ineradicable sense of dependence on a supernatural Being-has always exercised a noteworthy influence on education. At various times religion has determined the character of family life, and also, as among the ancient Jews, the character of social and political life. Both in ancient and modern times the priesthood has often been the educating class. It is religion that has furnished the strongest support of morals and cherished the loftiest ideals of life. The education of the present day in Europe and America is Christian education; for its universality rests on the

worth of the individual as a child of God, and the perfection at which it aims is found in the virtues and duties inculcated in the New Testament. The schools of the modern world, with their surpassing excellence and many-sided activities, are directly traceable to religious influences.

NECESSITY OF EDUCATION.-Education in some form is an absolute necessity for each generation. During a considerable period of his early life man is helpless and ignorant; he is without the strength or knowledge to maintain an independent existence. Left to himself in infancy he would quickly perish. The processes of physical and mental growth must therefore be watched over and assisted during the formative periods of childhood and youth. This is the function of education—a function that becomes more complicated and difficult with advancing civilization. There is no more sacred duty resting upon our race than the fostering care and instruction, which at the same time preserve and enrich life. Without some sort of education no generation would be fitted for the duties of maturity, and the progress of humanity would be suddenly and hopelessly arrested.

PREVALENCE OF EDUCATION.-Fortunately for mankind, education is a parental instinct, and in some form or other is as old as our race. Among all peoples, barbarous as well as civilized, each generation has received, often in a very defective and one-sided way, a special training for its subsequent career. When the state of civilization has been low, education has been correspondingly narrow and imperfect. Uncivilized communities do scarcely more than strengthen the body, sharpen the powers of observation, and develop skill in the use of hostile weapons. The beautiful world of science and art is undreamed of.

Among no two nations of antiquity were the theory and practise of education the same. It has always varied with the different social, political, and religious conditions of the people. But, however varied or imperfect its form, education has existed in every nation.

HUMAN PROGRESS.-It is a profound thought of German philosophy that God is leading the world, through a gradual though not uninterrupted development, to greater intelligence, freedom, and goodness. "The mode of this development," says Karl Schmidt, "is the same as that of the individual soul: the same law holds, because the same divine thought rules in the individual, in a people, and in humanity." Like the individual, each nation and our race as a whole have to pass through the successive stages of childhood, youth, and maturity. Each succeeding period inherits the accumulated wisdom of the preceding one, and in its turn adds new treasures of its own. After the lapse of many ages of striving and conflict, mankind has at length reached a stage of development among enlightened nations that seems to accord with the estate of manhood. Intelligence, freedom, morality, and religion, though still far from realizing the dreams of prophetic seers, prevail to a degree unprecedented in the past. With the accumulated forces of knowledge, science, and invention, the rapidity and momentum of human progress at the present time is something startling and unparalleled.

PROGRESS IN EDUCATION.-With improvement in other human interests, there has been unmistakable progress in education. Indeed, the ancient world, as we shall soon see, never succeeded in producing a correct and complete theory of education. If a great thinker now and then approximated the truth, his voice was lost upon the heed

less multitude. The practise could hardly be better than the theory. Hence we shall find that education was always defective, usually laying stress upon some particular phase of human culture, to the neglect of others. Sometimes the physical was emphasized, sometimes the intellectual, sometimes the moral, sometimes the religious; but never all together in perfect symmetry. It was reserved for the nineteenth century, so distinguished for its many-sided advancement, to realize an education which leaves, theoretically, no part of man's nature neglected.

NATURE OF EDUCATION.-The essential nature of education is now determined by a consideration of the being to be educated. In the capacities which man has received from his Creator, and in that which he is capable of becoming under favorable circumstances, we find the true ideal of education. Every part of man's nature should receive the development which its innate capacities demand, and without which the human being remains more or less defective and fails in the end of his existence. His innate capacities and powers, though at first existing in a germinal condition, contain within themselves large possibilities and a strong impulse toward development. Through the fostering care of education they should be led to a harmonious realization of their highest possibilities. Viewed in this light, the end of education is seen to be complete human development; and the finished result is a noble manhood or womanhood. The elements of this culture are a healthy body, a clear, well-informed intellect, sensibilities quickly susceptible to every right feeling, and a steady will whose volitions are determined by reason and an enlightened conscience.

"That man, I think," as Professor Huxley has forcibly said, "has had a liberal education who has been so trained

in his youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself."

OBJECTIVE SIDE OF EDUCATION. Thus, in its essential nature, education aims at developing a noble type of manhood; but it has also an external relation, which must not be forgotten. Man, as a member of society, has various duties to perform. He must earn a livelihood for himself and perhaps for others; he must discharge the duties growing out of his relations to his fellow men; and as a citizen he must assist in maintaining the government that gives him protection. The numerous duties that thus claim attention in active life require a considerable degree of knowledge and training. As childhood and youth are periods of preparation, it is clear that education, both in its subjects and methods of instruction, should have some reference to the demands of practical life. The individual does not live unto himself alone, and hence the process of human development should be combined with practical wisdom. The school should be a natural introduction to active life, and the transition from academic halls to the duties of manhood or womanhood should be made with