Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/864

844 of the common sense of the household, and the saving of a good many dollars of hard-earned money. It may perhaps be objected that ill-disposed boys would thus learn tricks that they might afterward attempt to practice. The same risk, however, attends every exposure, in the press or elsewhere, of vice or crime; and we think that an honest teacher could hardly fail to present the subject in a manner that would leave a large balance of good effect.

If there is anything that schools maintained by the State might be expected to do, it is to inculcate respect for the State, and in general to develop a sense of the debt which each individual owes to the society of which he forms a part. Nothing is easier to show than the entire dependence of the individual upon society for all that makes life worth living; and it ought not to be impossible to draw out certain feelings of regard and devotion toward the organism in which and through which alone individual life rises to any true worth or dignity. It can be shown that, just as the family, in the first place, educates the individual by taming his selfishness and developing his sympathies, so the State or community educates the family by widening its interests, multiplying its activities, and calling into existence those thousand differentiations, complications, and refinements of thought and feeling which distinguish civilized man from the savage. Were these lines of thought properly worked out, we believe they would be found to furnish the basis for an almost religious sense of duty to the State; and would certainly set in a strong light the odiousness of such treason to it as is involved in private fraud and in public corruption.

We shall only say in conclusion that it would, in our opinion, be well if the public would get more and more into the way of testing our school systems by their apparent practical results as regards the moral and intellectual life of the community. We ought to be able to form some idea as to whether the rising generation are growing up wiser and better than ourselves, or just about the same, or worse. We should postulate distinct improvement; and, if such improvement is not apparent, we should try to find out the reason why.

American Association met this year in its thirty-fifth meeting at Buffalo. It is the third time it has assembled in that city. its fifteenth and twenty-fifth meetings having also been held there. It is also a fact, of which the people of Buffalo took notice with a gratification they had a right to feel, that their city is the first place which has as yet enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the Association for the third time. The Hon. Sherman S. Rogers, who delivered one of the addresses of welcome, referred to the fact as significant of a growing regard among the people for those pursuits which contribute to the advancement of knowledge, irrespective of their bearing upon business, and as evidence that, eager as that active and enterprising city is in the material pursuits of life, "it is waking up to the conviction that man does not and can not live by bread alone." The same thing is going on in the other cities of the country, large and small, where increased appreciation is shown every year of those things which pertain to learning for its own sake, and where even the most active centers of commercial speculation have their academies working industriously in pure science.

The attendance was good, and the list of members is marked by the presence of a large proportion of those who have attained a solid reputation in their respective branches of science. The programme of the papers also exhibits