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 696 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the Greeks for the first time we find the idea of liberal education education as conscious progressive adjustment. In the Middle Ages the ideal of education is discipline mysticism and monasti- cism furnishing the type of discipline on the spiritual side, chivalry on the social side, and scholasticism on the intellectual side. In the humanistic ideal of the Renascence we have a revival of the idea of liberal education, which, however, in turn, becomes narrowed by its too restricted adherence to the literary content of the curriculum. The Reformation and Counter- Reformation illustrate the religious conception of education. Real- istic tendencies follow humanistic realism, social realism and sense realism. The modern disciplinary conception of education is considered in connection with Locke's educational writings. The naturalistic tendency is illustrated in Rousseau ; the psychological tendency, in Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel ; the scientific tendency, in Spencer and Huxley; and the sociological tendency, by many recent writers. The present period, the author says, is one of eclecticism ; and doubtless in a sense this is true. But every period is a "fusion" of existing or earlier tendencies, and an attempt at "harmonization" of conflicting theories. Is there not reason to think that this is as progressive and constructive a period as any that has preceded in the history of education?

The permanent problem, says Professor Monroe, is to transmit to each succeeding generation the elements of culture and of institutional life that have been found to be of value in the past, and that additional increment of culture which the existing generation has succeeded in working out for itself; to do this, _and _also -te -give to each individual the fullest liberty in formulating his own purposes in life and in shaping these to his own activities. The problem of the educator is to make the selection of this material that is essential in the life of the individual and essential to the perpetuity and progress of society, to construct it into a curriculum, to organize an institution to carry on this great process, and to formulate the rules and principles of the procedure which actually accomplish the result. The problem of the school is to take the material selected by the educator, to incorporate it into the life of each member of the coming generation so as to fit him into the social life of the times, to enable him to contribute to it and to better it, and to develop in him that highest of all personal possessions and that essential of a life satisfactory to his fellows and happy in itself, which we term character.

H. HEATH BAWDEN.

VASSAR COLLEGE, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.