Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/867

Rh this field than in any recognized department of natural science. What the effect upon social order and progress ot a really well-constituted science of political economy will be it is not difficult to foresee. It will act as the great harmonizer of conflicting claims, and a most potent aid to the realization of justice in all human relations. And once more it will be proved that the only way to know things is to know them practically, and that the only way to build up a science is to bring the facts together, and all the facts.

Oue correspondent, who writes on "Moral Instruction in our Public Schools," in this number of the "Monthly," points out an influence that profoundly affects the education of American youth. What Mr. Meredith states in modern scientific language—that man is an imitative creature—had been learned generations ago from the experience of practical men, and applied to education in the terse maxim, "Example is better than precept." Who that has had the care of children does not know how readily they do what they have seen older children and grown people do, and how hard it is to make them remember what they are told to do! This should be a sufficient reason to make every person so order his daily life that it shall be an improving objectlesson to his own children and to the children who are to be the associates of his own. It should be a sufficient reason, also, as our correspondent points out, for elevating only men of high integrity to positions of trust and power. In a country where it is possible for any native-born boy to become the head of the nation, youthful ambition has free scope. In order to satisfy this desire, the means by which public officials have risen to power are copied, the traits of successful men are imitated, even the manners and habits of those whom the people honor are adopted by the young. Hence it is extremely important that these means and traits and habits should be worthy of imitation. A determined effort should be made to check the demoralizing influence at present exerted by American public life. If this is not done speedily, the evil will grow as slavery grew, till it finally challenges the nation to a life-and-death struggle whose outcome no one can foresee. The example set by the present generation will determine whether the children now growing up shall be arrayed on the side of virtue and honor, or shall swell the ranks of corruption and crime.

We emphatically dissent, however, from Mr. Meredith's proposition that all is being done in the public schools that can be done, in the line of moral instruction. There is probably not a city or town in the country where morality is a recognized subject of instruction in the common schools, standing on the same footing as spelling or geography. Our schools give only information that will serve business purposes or discipline the mind, and utterly neglect training in right conduct. Their aim is to turn out money-getters, rather than to produce good citizens. If our schools were to give as much attention to judicious instruction in ethics as they now devote to the teaching of arithmetic, for instance, we believe that they would come much nearer to exerting the beneficial influence that is claimed for them than they do at present.

"Chautauquan" is a magazine published for the benefit of what is known as the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle." It is religious in its general character. It contains "Sunday Readings" which are noted as "selected by Bishop Vincent." In one of these we lately read the following: "Some counselors, like Herbert Spencer, advise us to follow our own self-interest, without concern for others, with the assurance that. all will be thus happier,