Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/645

Rh is man? Evidently if we are to educate man upon scientific methods we must know what man is; we must know the laws of his being, the relation of these laws to one another, and to the end for which man is made. The science of education, therefore, presupposes a true psychology, and a knowledge of the formation of character based upon this psychology. In our country so-called educational treatises are written by persons who have neither psychology nor minds to comprehend it; and, while these works may have much valuable practical matter, they should not be received as in any sense scientific. With one exception ("Education" by Herbert Spencer), the only works which may claim to pretend to treat education scientifically are German, and every one of these bases itself directly upon some psychological system. I need but name in illustration A. H. Niemeyer's "Ground Principles of Education," Fred. Schwarz's "Instruction-Book of Pädagogik," as coming directly out of the Kantian thought, or Miss Anna C. Brackett's translation of "The Philosophy of Education," by Professor Rosenkranz, the biographer of Hegel, as an application of Hegelian thought to education. We of to-day are feeling the influence of an entirely different philosophical system from either of those above mentioned. Our educational methods are being remarkably and rapidly modified. This change has received its psychological expression in England, and Mr. Spencer may be regarded as the representative thinker of this new school. Here the idea of man as to his nature and the laws of his development is distinct and peculiar; it gives us an education based almost entirely upon instruction in the physical sciences.

Pending the attainment of a psychology that shall secure sufficient general recognition to become the source of proper reform in our educational efforts, it would seem that nothing could be more profitable than some consideration of the history of education. It is surely matter for regret that a subject so important as this should not long since have been examined in the light of the idea of development. It is our good fortune in most other matters to have abandoned a priori discussion. Even with so deep a work as Goethe's "Faust" we feel that it is necessary to proceed historically if we are to gain correct ideas as to its origin and meaning. We have come to recognize this "Faust" as the life-poem of one of the greatest of our race; we have come also to know that the material which Goethe transformed was deeply rooted in our common humanity, and had already passed through a natural and vigorous development long before the poet's day. How much profundity of nonsense this historical feeling would have saved us in literature and religion can not be estimated. Our debt to Comte as the living source of modern historical feeling may well temper our judgments before his later speculations. We have a right to expect that whatever value there is in general historical study, as related to the life and works of men, we should find in the history of education