including end. Nevertheless, the openings for difference of opinion as to what constitutes happiness, virtue or perfection are very wide. Moreover, the discussion has its proper place in ethics and in theology, and, if brought into the field of education, should be received under protest. Before entering upon the consideration of this difficulty, the greatest of all, I will advert to some of the other views of education that seem to err on the side of taking in too much. Here I may quote from the younger Mill, who, like his father, and unlike the generality of theorists, starts more scientifico with a definition. Education, according to him, "includes whatever we do for ourselves, and whatever is done for us by others, for the express purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our nature. In its largest acceptation it comprehends even the indirect effects produced on character and on the human faculties by things of which the direct purposes are different; by laws, by forms of government, by the industrial arts, by modes of social life; nay, even by physical facts not dependent on the human will; by climate, soil and local position." He admits, however, that this is a very wide view of the subject, and for his own immediate purpose advances a narrower view, namely: "the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and, if possible, for raising, the improvement which has been attained."—[Inaugural Address at St. Andrews, page 4.] Besides involving the dispute as to what constitutes " perfection," the first and larger statement is, I think, too wide for the most comprehensive philosophy of education. The influence exerted on the human character by climate and geographical positions, by arts, laws, government, and modes of social life, constitute a very interesting department of sociology, and have their place there and nowhere else. What we do for ourselves, and what others do for us, to bring us nearer to the perfection of our nature, may be education in the precise sense of the word, and it may not. I do not see the propriety of including under the subject the direct operation of reward and punishment. No doubt we do something to educate ourselves, and society does something to educate us, in a sufficiently proper acceptation of the word; but the ordinary influence of society, in the dispensing of punishment and reward, is not the essential fact of education, as I propose to regard it, although an adjunct to some of its legitimate functions. Mill's narrower expression of the subject is not exactly erroneous; the mold ing of each generation by the one preceding is not improperly described as an education. It is, however, grandiose rather than scientific. Nothing is to be got out of it. It does not give the lead to the subsequent exposition. I find in the article "Education," in "Chamber's Encyclopedia," a definition to the following effect: "In the widest sense of the word a man is educated, either for good or for evil, by everything that he experiences from the cradle to the grave (say, rather, 'formed,' ' made, ''influence'). But, in the more limited and usual sense, the term education is confined to the efforts made, of set purpose, to train men in a particular way-the efforts of the grown-up part of the community to inform the intellect and mold the character of the young (rather too much stress on the fact of influence from without); and more especially to the labors of professional educators or schoolmasters." The concluding clause is the nearest to the point-the arts and methods employed by the schoolmaster; for although he is not in the work that he is expressly devoted to, yet he it is that typifies the process in its greatest singleness and purity. If by any investigations, inventions, or discussions, we can improve his art to the ideal pitch, we shall have done nearly all that can be required of a science and art of education. I return to the greater difficulty-namely, the question, what is the end of all teaching; or, if the end be human happiness and perfection, what definite guidance does this furnish to the educator? I have already remarked that the inquiry is acknowledged to belong to other departments; and, if in these departments clear and unanimous answers have not been arrived at, the educationist is not bound to make good the deficiency. For this emergency there is one thing obvious, another less obvious, the two together exhausting the resources of the educator. The obvious thing is to fix upon whatever matters people are agreed upon. Of such the number is considerable, and the instances important. They make the universal topics of the school. The less obvious thing is, with reference to matters not agreed upon, that the educator should set forth at what cost these doubtful acquisitions would have to be made; for the cost must be at least one element in the decision respecting them. Whoever knows most about education is best able to say how far its appliances can cope with such aims as softening the manners, securing selfrenunciation, bringing about the balanced action of all the powers, training the whole man, etc. We shall see that one part of the science of education consists in giving the ultimate analysis of all complex growths. It is on such an analysis that the cost can be calculated; and, by means of this we can best observe whether con tradictory demands are made upon the educator. What we have been drifting to in our search for an aim, is the work of the school. This may want a little more paring and rounding to give it scientific form, but it is the thing most calculated to fix and steady our vision at the outset. Now, in the success of the schoolmaster's work, the first and central fact is the plastic property of the mind itself. On this depends the acquisition, not simply of knowledge, but of everything that can be called an acquisition. The most patent display of the power consists in memory for knowledge imparted. In this view the leading inquiry in the art of education is how to strengthen memory. We are, therefore, led to take aecount of the several mental aptitudes that either directly or indirectly enter into the retentive functions. In other words, we must draw upon the science of the human mind for whatever that science contains respecting the conditions of memory. Although memory, acquisition, retentiveness, depends mainly upon one unique property of the intellect, which accordingly demands to be scrutinized with the utmost care, there are various other properties, intellectual and emotional, that aid in the general result, and to each of these regard must be had in a science of education. We have thus obtained the clue to one prime division of the subject—the purely psychological part. Of no less consequence is another department, at present without a name-an inquiry into the proper or natural order of the different subjects, grounded on their relative simplicity or complexity, and their mutual independence. It is necessary to success in education that a subject should not be presented to the pupil until all the preparatory subjects have been mastered. This is obvious enough in certain cases; arithmetic is taken before algebra, geometry before trigonometry, inorganic chemistry before organic; but in many cases the proper order is obscured by circumstances, and is an affair of very deliberate consideration. I may call this the analytic, or logical department of the theory of education. It is a part of scientific method to take strict account of leading terms, by a thorough and exhaustive inquiry into the meanings of all such. The settlement of many questions relating to education is embarrassed by the vagueness of the single term "discipline." Further, it ought to be pointed out as specially applicable to our present subject, that the best attainable knowledge on anything is due to a combination of general principles obtained from sciences, with well-conducted observations and experiments made in actual practice. On every great question there should be a convergence of both lights. The technical expression for this is the union of the deductive and inductive methods. The deductions are to be obtained apart, in their own way, and with all attainable precision. The inductions are the maxims of practice, purified, in the first instance, by wide comparison and by the requisite precautions. I thus propose to remove from the science of education matters belonging to much wider departments of human conduct, and to concentrate the view upon what exclusively pertains to education--the means of building up the acquired powers of human beings. The communication of knowledge is the ready type of the process, but the training operation enters into parts of the mind not intellectual-the activities and the emotions; the same forces, however, being at work. Education does not embrace the employment of all our intellectual functions. There is a different art for directing the faculties in productive labor, as in the professions, in the original investigations of the man of science or the creations of the artist. The principles of the human mind are applicable to both departments, but, although the two come into occasional contact, they are so far distant that there is an advantage in viewing them separately. In the practical treatise of Locke, entitled "The Conduct of the Understanding," acquisition, production and invention are handled promiscuously.-[New York School Journal. FAITH builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest shrines; and up through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro-Prayer.-Lytton. —If only we strive to be pure and true To each and to all, there will come an hour THE POPULATION OF THE GLOBE. THE HE most trustworthy estimate of the number of people on the earth for the year 1876, as furnished by German statisticians, is 1,423,917,000. This is an increase of over twenty-seven millions on the estimate of 1875, but the augmentation is not due entirely to the excess of births over deaths, but largely to rhe obtaining of more accurate information regarding the population of regions hitherto little known, and to more perfect census returns from other countries. Asia is still the home of the majority of the human race, after having supplied offshoots from which have sprung great Western peoples. About four-sevenths of the earth's population is Asiatic, or 825,548,590; Europe comes next with over a fifth, or 309,178,300; Africa with about a seventh, or 199,921,600; America, with less than a sixteenth, or 86,519,800; and finally Australia and Polynesia, with the very small fraction of 4,748,600 people. Europe is the most densely populated, having eighty-two persons to the square mile; Asia comes next, with seventeen and a half, and America and Australia bring up the rear with five and a half and one and a half, respectively. There are 215 cities on the earth with a population of over one hundred thousand; twenty-nine of half a million or more, and nine cities containing a million or more inhabitants. Of these last, four are in China. Including Brooklyn with New York, as we may rightfully do for purposes of comparison, and the greatest cities of the world stand in this order: London, 3,489,428; Paris, 1,851,792; New York, 1,535,822; Vienna, 1,091,999; Berlin, 1,044,000; Canton and three other Chinese cities, one million each. New York, therefere, takes its place third in the list of great cities, without counting our New Jersey overflow. Though there are not at hand statistics upon which to base an accurate statement of the fact, yet it is the opinion of all observers of the condition of civilized peoples that the average longevity of the human race has increased within a hundred years. Such reports of the death rate as we have got support that conclusion, and it is thoroughly proved that the devastations of epidemic diseases are not so great now as formerly; while the medical art steadily advances in its mastery of the disorders of the human system, and in its ability to ward off and check maladies which threaten human life. In England, for instance, the death rate has declined considerably during a quarter of a century. There and elsewhere in Europe, as also in this country, the subject of public hygiene has received great attention of recent years, and its difficulties are being steadily Overcome. The probability is that men now on the average live longer than their ancestors, and in better average health, and that our descendents will gain on us in those respects. As to great cities, New York is easily third. If it took in all its children, it would press hard on Paris for the second place, and before the next century is reached, or before it has advanced far, will probably know no superior except marvelous London.-[New York Sun. THERE are 5,600,000 people in the United States who cannot read or write. GOOD ORDER. BY PROF. S. T. LOWRY, OWENSBORO, KY. HE legitimate agencies to be employed by the teacher in securing good order vary with the character of the offense, and the age, disposition and previous training of those who are subjected to school discipline. It is related of Damastes, a legendary robber of Attica, that he placed all the victims who fell into his hands upon an iron bed, and, if they were too long, he cut them off, but if too short he stretched them out until all were made to fit this Procrustean bed. Happy the few victims whose length was such as to require no alteration, but woe unto the much larger number who were compelled to undergo the excruciating tortures necessary to fit them for this unyielding measure. Mental natures and peculiarities will vary in pupils as much as their physical height, and he who attempts to compress or extend these by a perfectly uniform measure, will lop off or dwarf by compression much that is valuable and useful. It behooves us, as teachers, to constantly realize this important fact, aud take a comprehensive and rational view of our work in every department, and see that we always have in lively exercise the most efficient means and agencies for accomplishing the work desired. In the use of such agencies the teacher must be guided by independent, original judgment. He cannot successfully adopt the views and plans of another. He, and he alone, can have that knowledge of all the circumstances and surroundings, of the habits and disposition of the pupil, which will enable him to apply the proper agency, in the proper way and at the proper time. To hear a teacher say, "I find it impossible to break up this or that disorderly habit," is a humiliating confession indeed, and is a much greater concession than any teacher ought to be willing to make. Still, when asked how I would accomplish the same result, I find it a very puzzling question, and one quite difficult to answer. How any teacher should act in any special emergency depends upon a thousand modifying circumstances, of which only the constantly present teacher is qualified to properly judge, and only he who is conversant with these, and knows how to weigh them judiciously, can act safely and successfully. Again, two teachers will sometimes pursue very different plans, and yet arrive at substantially the same results with equal ease and dispatch. Hence, a teacher should be guarded in adopting the plans and methods of another. Prove all things by actual and fair trial, if they commend themselves to your judgment, but hold fast only to that which you find accomplishes most successfully the result almed at. We should, however, be. extremely cautious against a too hasty judgment in making trial of new plans and methods. We become so accustomed to doing things in a certain way that all innovations seem awkward and unwieldy at first, and we are liable to judge harshly and pronounce impractical a plan or measure, when the difficulty lies solely in our unskillful execution of it. Therefore, be sure that you give it a fair, faithful and impartial trial, and if you do not then succeed with it, discard it, no matter what success others may claim in using it. |