Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/131

Rh people, who know neither antiquity, nor the sciences, nor languages, nor even orthography, are nevertheless very worth y folk; while inversely we find that all their instruction has not preserved a number of unfortunates from the worst lapses; and neither certificates nor diplomas have prevented them from succumbing to the most vulgar temptations." As applied to this country the writer's language is a little lacking in exactness; for here the conditions are such that it is difficult, for native-born citizens at least, to remain ignorant of the arts of reading and writing except through fault of their own; but it certainly has been the case in the past everywhere that people could be, as he says, "fort honnêtes gens" without any tincture of what we now call education. Their knowledge was confined to some useful art by which they earned a living, and the precepts of common morality.

The question M. Brunetière next discusses is how "to put some soul back into the school," or, in his own words, "rendre une áme àa l'école"; but his observations on this point, referring as they do to a system of education controlled by the national Government, have but a slight application to this country. It is here, however, that we find ourselves disagreeing with some of his incidental remarks. He accuses men of science of being excessively dogmatic in their opinions, and apparently ignoring the modern conception of the relativity of knowledge. Now, some men of science may be dogmatic, but to say, as the learned editor does, that a most of these will not allow their conclusions to be disputed, or so much as criticised," is to fall into great exaggeration. As to the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, it is a doctrine which science has established. It is earnestly and constantly insisted on by Auguste Comte, and has been illustrated and elaborated in great detail by Herbert Spencer. It is not, however, a doctrine of which much use can be made in imparting scientific or any other knowledge to the young, whose natural philosophic creed is one of simple confidence in the reality of phenomena. M. Brunetière is further of opinion that science should only be given in very small and judicious doses in primary and secondary schools. The important thing, in our opinion, is, that nothing should be done to check the spontaneous activity of youthful minds, or any flow of emotion which may be associated therewith. Science should, therefore, not be imparted to the young in too didactic or formal a manner; it should rather come to them in the form of a constant appeal to investigate, to use their own faculties of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and to draw their own inferences from data thus collected. We quite believe that, in the hands of an inexperienced and unsympathetic teacher, science lessons might be given to youthful students in such a way as simply to check imagination and inspire distrust in the testimony of the senses; but when the right kind of science teaching can be got, there will be no need to deal it out as the dangerous drug which the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes seems to consider it.

Returning to the question on which, as we have stated, this writer does not give us much help—how to get "soul" into the schools—we must observe that any success in such an effort will depend largely on public opinion. The great mischief of an imperfect educational system is that it creates the public opinion by which itself is judged. The man of thirty-five, who to-day has children of his own at school, was a scholar himself