represent the matter in its general outlines, and thus awaken the desire to understand it better, and to test its merits by application.

The most difficult of all difficult tasks is without doubt to give a universally enlightening definition to a new truth - great or small — for new truths always lie outside the general mental horizon. Even Froebel himself, therefore, has had little success in describing his educational theory in its full compass, and he is, perhaps, even more justified than Hegel and other thinkers in complaining that he has not been understood. Far be it from us to pretend here to expound this idea in its whole breadth and depth we would only attempt by means of the following short statements to open up the way to an understanding of it:

The process of spiritual development goes on according to fixed laws. These laws correspond to the general laws which reign throughout the universe, but are at the same time higher, because suited to a higher stage of development.

This system of laws must be able to be traced back to a fundamental law, however much the latter may vary in its formulæ.

FROEBEL'S THEORY OF EDUCATION

As a result of the foregoing we find the first general educational requisites to be:

Assistance of spontaneous development which shall accord with the laws of nature;

Considerations for the outward conditions of life of each epoch, and for each personality;

Understanding and application of the universal laws of spiritual development.

With regard to the special services rendered by Froebel, let me here repeat what I have already mentioned, that Froebel has discovered the method and practical means of disciplining, or of developing, body, soul and mind, will, feeling and understanding according to the systematic laws of nature.

In the practical application of the positive and individual portion of it, the simplicity and naturalness of Froebel's method stand out markedly, and at once do away with any idea of its being pedantic or artificial, and in opposition to the natural free development of the child.

359. English and German Universities contrasted

(Huxley, T. H., Science and Education, pp. 104-07. Collected Essays, vol. III. London, 1893)

The ablest English writer and speaker who forcefully supported the general line of argument advanced by Herbert Spencer, as to

the importance of a revision of existing school instruction and the introduction of science teaching, was the English scientist, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).

In an address delivered, in 1868, to the South London Working Men's College on "A Liberal Education; and Where to find it," Huxley stated so clearly the defects of existing educational conditions in England, and gave such a good definition as to what in his judgment constituted a liberal education, that this address may be taken as one of the most important expressions of the period of the new interest in England in educational reform. Contrasting the English and German universities, he said:

I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish to become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he visited our universities with that object.

And, as for works of profound research on any subject, and, above all, in that classical lore for which the universities profess to sacrifice almost everything else, why, a third-rate, poverty-stricken German university turns out more produce of that kind in one year, than our vast and wealthy foundations elaborate in ten.

Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly and thoroughly—be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical, literary, or theological; who is trying to make himself master of any abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both of which are intensely Anglican sciences), whether he is not compelled to read half a dozen times as many German as English books? And whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a fellow of a college, or a professor of an English university?

Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, to go no further back than the contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. England can show now, as she had been able to show in every generation since civilisation spread over the West, individual men who hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition. of her intellectual eminence.

But, in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue. of their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which will not recognize impediments. They are not trained in the courts of the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to obtain their legitimate positions.

Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer

them positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly, that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible, university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to persuade such men that the education which leads to perfection in such elegances is alone to be called culture; while the facts of history, the process of thought, the conditions of moral and social existence, and the laws of physical nature are left to be dealt with as they may be by outside barbarians.

It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice a century ago, have become what they now are the most intensely cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world has ever seen,

The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of professors a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known and revered throughout the civilised world; and their living example infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work.

The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same simple secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe. They have declared la carrière ouverte aux talents, and every Bursch marches with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar, or man of science, and ministers will compete for his services. In Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the office he would render illustrious to the tender mercies of a hot canvass, and the final wisdom of a mob of country parsons.

In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what the Rector of Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the English universities are not; that is to say, corporations "of learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation of science, and the direction of academical education." They are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical seminaries; but institutions for the higher culture of men, in which the theological faculty is of no more importance, or prominence, than the rest; and which are truly "universities," since they strive to represent and embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find room for all forms of intellectual activity.

360. Mid-Nineteenth Century Elementary Education in England (Huxley, T. H., Science and Education, pp. 87-91. Collected Essays, vol. III. London, 1893)

Continuing still further on English education of the time (1868), Huxley draws the following picture as to the nature and value of the instruction then provided in the elementary schools of the people:

Consider our primary schools and what is taught in them. A child learns:

1. To read, write, and cipher, more or less well; but in a very large proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in reading, or to be able to write the commonest letter properly.

2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the child, nine times. out of ten, understands next to nothing.

3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall with it, a few of the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the apple in Newton's garden an integral part of the doctrine of gravitation, and teach it as of equal authority with the law of the inverse squares.

4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geography, and perhaps a little something about English history and the geography of the child's own country. But I doubt if there is a primary school in England in which hangs a map of the hundred in which the village lies, so that the children may be practically taught by it what a map means. 5. A certain amount of regularity, attentive obedience, respect for others: obtained by fear, if the master be incompetent or foolish; by love and reverence, if he be wise.

So far as this school course embraces a training in the theory and practice of obedience to the moral laws of Nature, I gladly admit, not only that it contains a valuable educational element, but that, so far, it deals with the most valuable and important part of all education. Yet, contrast what is done in this direction with what might be done; with the time given to matters of comparatively no importance; with the absence of any attention to things of the highest moment; and one is tempted to think of Falstaff's bill and "the halfpenny worth of bread to all that quantity of sack."

Let us consider what a child thus "educated" knows, and what it does not know. Begin with the most important topic of all - morality, as the guide of conduct. The child knows well enough that some acts meet with approbation and some with disapprobation. But it has never heard that there lies in the nature of things a reason for every moral law, as cogent and as well defined as that which underlies every physical law; that stealing and lying are just as certain to be followed

by evil consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or jumping out of a garret window. Again, though the scholar may have been made acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with the broad laws of morality, he has had no training in the application of those laws to the difficult problems which result from the complex conditions of modern civilisation.

Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history or the political organization of his own country. His general impression is, that everything of much importance happened a very long while ago; and that the Queen and the gentlefolks govern the country much after the fashion of King David and the elders and nobles of Israel — his sole models. Will you give a man with this much information a vote? In easy times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not? It is of about as much use to him as a chignon, and he knows as much what to do with it, for any other purpose. In bad times, on the contrary, he applies his simple theory of government, and believes that his rulers are the cause of his sufferings - a belief which sometimes bears remarkable practical fruits.

Least of all, does the child gather from this primary "education" of ours a conception of the laws of the physical world, or of the relations of cause and effect therein. And this is the more to be lamented, as the poor are especially exposed to physical evils, and are more interested in removing them than any other class of the community. If any one is concerned in knowing the ordinary laws of mechanics one would think it is the hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and pulleys; or among the other implements of artisan work. And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-prepared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad drainage, and half whose children are massacred by disorders which might be prevented. Not only does our present primary education carefully abstain from hinting to the workman that some of his greatest evils are traceable to mere physical agencies, which could be removed by energy, patience, and frugality; but it does worse it renders him, so far as it can, deaf to those who would help him, and tries to substitute an Oriental submission to what is falsely declared to be the will of God, for his natural tendency to strive after a better condition.

What wonder, then, if very recently an appeal has been made to statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of showing that education is of no good that it diminishes neither misery nor crime among the masses of mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has been called education do either the one or the other?...