Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/574

558 practical intelligence. In so far as the studies to which we refer make for intelligence in the true sense, they are to be commended and valued; but, in so far as they stand in the way of the acquisition of knowledge or of practical arts better adapted to develop the judgment, and in a general way to produce a robust intellectual constitution, they are to be deprecated. We are rather of opinion that the training which the majority of people chiefly require, is one that will enable them to pronounce sure judgments on questions of limited range, leading them on gradually to efforts of wider scope just as their knowledge and experience are enlarged, A lack of common sense goes very ill with pretensions to superior culture; yet the two are not unfrequently associated. A fine appreciation of Dante's poetry seems like misplaced intellectual luxury, when we find that the person possessing it is unable to say yes or no to some comparatively simple question, or unable to help himself or herself in some very slight intellectual difficulty, or to throw off the thralldom of silly and misleading phrases. "C'est magnifique" one is tempted to exclaim, "mais ce n'est pas la vie!" Splendid, no doubt, but not real life! We should, therefore, propose that those who engage in these fine studies—capable, under suitable conditions, of yielding most valuable results—should check their progress from week to week and month to month by asking, and trying to ascertain, whether their judgment is being developed, whether in the common things of life they are moving with a firmer step, whether they more readily put aside flimsy pretenses and specious seemings, and pierce more truly to the heart of the matters with which they have to deal. What we all want is better order in our daily thoughts, a clearer vision, a firmer courage. True culture of course implies progress in these directions; but much that passes for culture does little or nothing either for the mind or for the character. Much depends on the end we keep in view. If we study great authors for the sake of having, as it were, an elaborately furnished drawing-room in our minds, we shall get about the same amount of benefit as people commonly get from elaborate drawing-room furniture; but if we study them so as to gain a wider outlook on the world through understanding their thought and duly estimating the conditions under which they wrote—if, moreover, we prove ourselves from time to time, to see whether we are really gaining in mental power—the benefit to us may be very great. We rejoice at every sign of increasing intellectual activity throughout the country, and only ask that it may all be dominated by practical ends and made subservient, not to individual vanity, but to the best interests of American civilization.

noticed quite a ripple of discontent some time ago in educational quarters, particularly over certain remarks of ours tending to show that education was a matter for the family and for private co-operation, rather than for the state. One respected correspondent asked if we wished to deliver education over to the haphazard of private competition, and we replied by suggesting that there was rather more of haphazard in the politics that necessarily entered into state education than in the methods of the business world. Well, it so happens that public attention and criticism have lately been directed to the public-school system of our own highly-favored metropolis. And with what result? Why, that the system in question, which had often been lauded to the skies as a model of efficiency, as a shining example of what state authority, coupled with the taxing power, could effect in the field of education, has been found wanting at almost every point, vitiated through and