Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/302

272 of material has been gathered within the college walls, or whether, if the material is all right, the course of instruction and discipline has been what it should have been. But, this consideration apart, has the public learned to recognize in the average college graduate a very intelligent, helpful, and self-helping young man? Or does just a suspicion of greater or less silliness and incapacity attach to the type? That many bright young men emerge from college it would be foolish, even on the general doctrine of probabilities, to doubt, seeing that a young man, if he possesses any brightness, has so good a chance in this country of being sent to college; but what, we ask, is the effect on those who have no bent toward learning, but who go to satisfy a social exigency or to fill up a certain number of vacant years? We fear that Prof. Petrie might in his haste pronounce some of them manufactured idiots not unlike the Egyptians he had seen spoiled by overmuch reading and writing.

But, taking a wider view, are we sure that even the public-school education which we force on all children alike is always an aid to true intelligence and civilization? Such as it is, it enfeebles, we greatly fear, rather than strengthens the brains of some who are subjected to it, and who are not intellectually fit for the abstractions with which, it largely deals. The whole subject requires to be carefully studied apart from all prepossession, prejudice, and sentiment. We have been forcing education for a long time with all the power of the state, but whether the average intelligence of the community has risen in response to our efforts is a question which it would not be safe to answer offhand. We do not hesitate to say that to us it appears as if our methods of education were being insensibly adapted to a lower and lower grade of general intelligence. In the matter of arithmetic, particularly, it seems to be assumed that something like idiocy is not only the starting point in the pupil's mind but a condition of considerable duration. Forty years ago no such elaborate means were resorted to as seem necessary to-day to get a few elementary principles of numerical logic into a child's mind; and it is a grave question whether in the attempt to devise a system of teaching adapted to the most degraded type of mind we are not running some risk of impairing the development of minds of a higher order. Exceeding bitter, we know, has been the cry of many a parent at the tedious drill and senseless repetitions imposed upon his children and the consequent needless lengthening by two or three years at least of the period of school education. The philosophy of the whole thing is apparent in the light of Prof. Petrie's remarks. The state is, to a not inconsiderable extent, engaged in the manufacture of idiots.

The discussion which followed the president's address was remarkable in one respect, and that was that among the speakers—all men of distinction—not one laid any stress, as would certainly have been done a generation ago, on the importance of Christianizing the lower races. It seemed to be assumed that Christianity, as a doctrine and to some extent as a moral system, involved too radical a change of ideas to be profitably adopted by heathen tribes, unless in a very gradual manner. The president himself pointed out that the apostle Paul had not seen it necessary to prohibit slavery, polygamy, or even gladiatorial shows. And yet the preaching of Paul prepared the way for "the greatest readjustment of the moral sense that the world has ever seen." We should learn