sole or the main source of our knowledge and discipline. It is usually said that there are two sources of knowledge-experience and language; but the precept "Follow Nature" forbids the intervention of language as a source of knowledge, and makes the process of learning a course in personal experience. Experimental knowledge, it is claimed, is the only real knowledge; all we truly know is included within the circle of our personal experiences, of our sensations, and of the inferences we draw from them. Rousseau sequesters Émile, so far as possible, from the society of men, in order that he may be tutored by Nature; that is, by experience. Instead of the mother, Mr. Spencer makes the candle-flame, the fire-bars, and boiling water the teachers of the child. Primitive man, we are told, had no teacher but experience; the successive generations of men have gained their knowledge in the same way; experience is therefore the typical process of human education, the only royal road to learning.

A few tests applied to this theory would seem to show its general unsoundness. Is history knowledge? On the hypothesis that the real test of knowledge is experience, there can be no such thing as historical knowledge, for we cannot be brought into personal relations with the events which have given rise to history. This high doctrine has been maintained on the floor of this association.*

Is our knowledge of geography limited to what we have learned by travel? May we be said to know anything of the countries we have never visited? I once had a pupil who was a thorough convert to the Spencerian doctrine that there could be no knowledge where there was no personal experience. "Have you ever been abroad?" I asked. "No." "Then do you know that there is such a city as London?" "No." "How would you gain this knowledge?" "I would go there." "How would you know when you reached there?" So authority confronts us on every hand-the new theory broke down at this point.

Again, on this hypothesis, what is the function of books? Possibly Mr. Spencer may have learned all his philosophy from his own observations and reflections; but, on his own hypothesis, why does he write so many books for other men to read? Scholarship and culture have always meant and will ever mean a loving devotion to good books.

I venture to say that the following statements are substantially true:

The process we call civilization is the triumph of art over Nature, and is a mark of human progress. Men will not renounce the essential concomitants of civilization and revert to a state of Nature in pursuit of happiness or moral good. The men of each new generation

At the meeting in Madison, Wis., in 1884, by Hon. John W. Dickinson.

will start forward from the vantage ground secured for them by their predecessors on the earth. They will accept and use the labor-saving machines which they inherit from the past, and, without wasting time and strength in the effort to reinvent, they will capitalize their own experience and wisdom in some other or better labor-saving devices.

The knowledge gained by experience and experiment is capitalized and transmitted in books, and the great mass of men in each new generation will gain their knowledge by the interpretation of the books left by the wise and the good. The pretense lately set up, that students in science are to gain their knowledge inductively, by personal research in the way of rediscovery, is a shallow fad. It would be just as reputable to counsel men to construct their own almanacs. Try to imagine a class of even university students attempting to rediscover the atomic weight of chlorine, or even the specific gravity of iron! If we commit ourselves to such folly at all, why not be radically and consistently foolish, and set about reinventing the appa ratus of the modern laboratory? Students should certainly have some training in physical manipulation and experiment, not on the pretense of rediscovery but rather as a means of initiation into the processes of modern scientific research. The culminating absurdity of this doctrine of rediscovery is vivisection, which, as practiced in all ordinary cases, is nothing less than a crime.

Can virtue, in an intelligible sense, be capitalized, transmitted, and taught, so that in the moral life each generation may start from a higher vantage ground; or must we be remanded to an experimental ethics, as our reformers would remand us to experimental science? This question cannot be argued at this time, but a little reflection will show that the world can grow better only on the hypothesis that the attainment of virtue is made somewhat easier for each succeeding generation. In other words, virtue can be taught; each child is not to construct a code of ethics out of his own experiences, but is to accept the highest code of ethics that humanity has bequeathed to him.

Interpreting Nature in the sense of experience, or contact with environment, which is the prevailing sense in which Rousseau and Spencer use this term, and, speaking only for myself, I find but little that is really helpful in the stock precept "Follow Nature," save this: It serves to keep alive the fact that learners are ever in danger of mistaking words for things, and so guards us against an education that is purely "livresque," as it has been styled. Thomas Hobbes uttered the same caution when he declared that "words are wise men's counters, but the money of fools."

I find much more help in a side-conception which appears in the "Emile" as a sort of undertone-that there is an imminent tendency in civilization toward a distracting and unwholesome complexity, and that the need of the age is a return to simplicity. Rousseau's illustration of his meaning is very happy. Speaking of teaching children to read, he says: "We no longer know how to be simple in anything. Look at the machines we invent for teaching children to read-cabinets, charts, and what not-all useless lumber. We do everything save the one thing essential, creating in the child a desire to read; do this, and all methods are good." As I interpret this phase of Rousseau's educational philosophy, it is this: Follow main routes; abandon bypaths; strike at creative motives; occupy strategic or dominant positions. Educate as artists paint. Begin with broad strokes, leaving details for after consideration. Imitate the unity of Nature, and, instead of reducing a child to fractions, treat him as an integer, making his education wholesome and humane.

The stress we put on training is the symptom of a general unsoundness. A trained horse or a trained pig is not a normal and wholesome horse or pig, but an animal artifically shaped and fashioned into a fraction or fragment. A thin glaze of book-keeping converts an ignorant boy into a writing or adding machine, and unfits him for the functions of a man proper. Teachers are now being trained rather than educated, and these fractions tend to perpetuate fragments. The one great merit of the kindergarten is, that it keeps children whole and allows them to grow by an organic process into symmetrical units. The danger of the graded school, and even of the college, is stratification-the deposition of knowledge in layers by specialists; and the remedy for this and kindred evils is a return to a wholesome simplicity of Nature-to an education according to Nature.

In a more specific sense, we follow Nature when we adapt our instruction to the organic mode of the mind's activities. The mind is an organism having its own predetermined mode of activity. This constitutes its nature; and, when we respect this order of procedure in the presentation of knowledge, we may with scientific accuracy be said to follow Nature. When the mind works naturally—that is, in accordance with the laws of its organization-it proceeds from aggregates to parts, from the vague to the definite, and, in childhood, from the concrete to the abstract; and the teacher follows Nature when he allows the mind to elaborate its knowledge in this order.

In conclusion, I venture to offer this bit of advice to those who are trying to make of their teaching a rational art: In your thinking and writing never allow yourself to personify the term Nature, but leave the mythologist, the poet, and the novelist in sole possession of this deity.

THE EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION.

BY CHARLES R. SKINNER, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, ALBANY, N. Y.

What is public opinion? How shall it be educated? Clamor is sometimes mistaken for public opinion; the shouts of a mob for public sentiment; an aroused passion for the voice of the people. Inquiry as to what public opinion is finds itself confronted with the frequent belief that there does not exist any real standard of public opinion. In religion, in politics, in society, and in education, there is no guide which can be implicitly followed which will be invariable under all conditions. We may accept, as the most satisfactory definition, that public opinion is the united judgment of few or many citizens which dominates the community. But this judgment may not express the opinion of the majority. A person with a strong will, personal magnetism, and popularity may so influence a community that his individual opinion will be accepted for public opinion. But for the community this is not an educated public opinion. It is acquiesence. Education may teach such followers that they do not express a real opinion. Communities are often too confiding and too careless. To save the trouble of investigating public questions, the opinion of a leader is accepted without further thought.

Sometimes a political leader makes known his opinions and expects his party followers to fall into line, and to accept his views as a test of personal or political loyalty. The opinions of one man have been known to control a school board, who sit still, say nothing, and ratify; in religion, the opinion of the minister finds the door open to belief; in society, the leaders set the fashions, and no questions are asked; in journalsim, the views of the editor with a strong individuality are accepted as conclusive; in education, the schoolmaster's opinions are the guide of those who have faith in them. Sometimes it seems as if there were no opinions behind these strong men and women who impress themselves and their ideas upon the people.

Countries, states, and communities illustrate the lack of an accepted standard of public opinion. That which is considered orthodox in one country may be heresy in another. That which is believed to be blasphemy in one state is considered moral over the line. That which one state permits by law another state prohibits. That which one city embraces as right another city rejects as wrong. That which one community would fight to build up another community would struggle as hard to tear down. The changes in public opinion are well illustrated by the thermometer. They vary with lo

cality. Zero and summer heat may change places under changing conditions. The mercury touched by public opinion indicates its force at different altitudes. When the mercury of public opinion rises to a certain point in one city, we will find justified the Sunday ball game, the opening of public gardens, the Sunday liquor selling; in another city public opinion will close all its saloons and business places and stop the street railways. There is a different moral standard. In one state public opinion justifies lynch law; in another every criminal is guaranteed a fair trial. In one state, trial and conviction means swift punishment, in another the law's delay. One state may cling to the established whipping post, while in another its advocates are denied the courtesy of a hearing, and are escorted from the halls of legislation as offensive lobbyists. That which would satisfy Oklahoma would not be accepted in New England.

In many of our Eastern States public opinion seems to believe that a single gold standard would be best for the business interest of our country; while here public opinion, by a large majority, believes that financial safety lies only in silver, sixteen to one, and it 'does not hesitate to express itself.

What is public opinion on the great question of the relative values of silver and gold-a question which may yet confuse all the old political parties? How shall it be determined? How shall we reach an agreement as to what is best for the greatest prosperity of all our people? So we find that public opinion is a constantly varying quantity. How shall it be educated on all public questions, so that all citizens may stand upon common ground, and that ground safe and strong?

Public opinion will surely work its way when rightly educated. In New York's capital city is a fine high school in which for many years every national holiday has been observed by patriotic exercises under the lead and inspiration of the soldier principal, whose love of country took him through the war and whose interest in education has brought him with us here. This spirit of patriotism has spread its influence over many communities. It has been caught up by the Grand Army of the Republic, and to-day we have a new law which places the American flag on every schoolhouse in our state. Public opinion sustains this law. Public opinion in favor of cleanliness, and health, and decency has given us laws which slowly but surely will secure better schoolhouses and pleasanter school grounds. Public opinion sustains Arbor day, and surrounds our children with trees and flowers, in the belief, that, if we would have them lovers of the beautiful in life, we must give them glimpses of the beautiful in our schools.

For many long years there were no fixed standards of qualification for our teachers, or they were low and worthless. Efforts to