boy from the school does not know how to use his hands and he does not know what to do with a left-handed wrench." I said, "How is it after the first month?" He said, “Just the same after one month or two months." I said, "How is it at the end of one year or two years; how is it then?" "Oh! the boy from the school is ahead of the boy from the street at the end of the year. His hands have become a component part of himself and his brain and hand work together now. He knows now how to work with a left-handed wrench. He knows the machinery and all its intricacies. He knows the laws of nature by which this machine works." Keep the boys in the school-room. Teach them the same things as boys going through college, and above all, teach them to think on two sides of a question, and the laboring boy is just as good as the scholastic boy.

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III.

The Teaching of Mental Science in Schools.

By Principal SAMUEL THURBER, Roxbury, Mass.

In 1875, being then a member of the University of the State of New York, I enjoyed the honor of addressing the Convocation on a topic that seemed to me of paramount importance. In behalf of the secondary schools, I urged that the colleges should abandon Greek as a requirement for admission, in order that room might be made in the schools for those studies which the interests of citizens in a modern state more clearly demand. Twelve years have past, and again I stand before the Convocation, this time through your courtesy, and as a visitor from another commonwealth. I am not conscious of being frightened by the memory of my earlier suggestions of innovation, though my contention of twelve years ago was so much in the line of the drift of public opinion that since that day I have seen college presidents vieing with one another in offering courses of study, preparation for which requires not only no Greek but even no Latin. That I contributed my mite to help this movement I do not to-day regret. The movement is the continuation of the great course of development in upper education, clearly traceable, if one will but study its history, from the Renaissance down to the newest programme of Harvard College. Such a movement is beyond the power of individuals either greatly to further or greatly to retard, and every man's relation to it is a modest one, and should be so confessed.

But a modest conception of one's power to stay the rising or the ebbing tide in great social changes should not excuse an attitude of indifference towards these changes. Singly and unitedly practical teachers are wanted in the front of all these movements, and not in their rear. Neither lamentation nor stolid contempt on our part will help our generation onward out of its perplexities. Let us rather be its cheerful guides, and offer it counsel and direction. I am sure it will accept such service. As allies we may leave our impress on a secular tendency, on which we could not exert the least influence by attempts at obstruction.

It may be said, it seems to me, that a marked characteristic of the

present age is a disposition to cut loose from antiquity and to seek the ultimate conditions of culture in its own resources.

Antiquity never interested more people, or interested people more profoundly, than it does to-day; but it is interesting as an object of investigation, and not as possessing authority over men. Nothing material for living men to know is any longer locked in a dead language. No discipline is gained from the study of the ancient languages that has not its full equivalent in other disciplines known to the schools. Such convictions as these are wide spread among the thinkers of this generation. College courses are quick to respond to such a prevalent tendency of thought. School programmes show its influence more slowly. The reason is clear. A college can extend and diversify its courses, offering attractions to match every taste, thus avoiding the responsibility of deciding what kind of upper education is the best in the abstract, and giving only special education, such as its contemporaries demand. This the secondary school cannot do. So far as it is a mere fitting school, it may, to the extent of its means, organize a variety of preparatory courses to meet the variety of college courses. But the secondary school is, and probably always will be, the final school of the great majority of its pupils. Somebody must plan and think for the secondary schools, and that too under a sense of peculiar responsibility. Moreover no plan or conclusion is absolutely final. It is always necessary to reshape things a little. There is overpressure, perhaps, and parents complain; or business men find that the graduates write and cipher badly; or philanthropists find that socialism is traceable to some neglect in the school programme; or some teaching of politicial economy would remedy the discontent of workmen. Thus whoever presides over a high school or academy hears many offers of counsel looking towards change, and must needs have some settled principles to guide him in maintaining a wise conservatism or in yielding something to wise innovation. Governed by the recognized laws of mental development, the school course may change its outward forms from time to time, while yet intelligently aiming at the same results.

What should be these principles, entitled to determine the wisdom or non-wisdom of proposed change? We may say that a course of secondary education should leave its graduate in possession, first, of the tools or instruments of knowledge; secondly, of habits of mind, such as express themselves in what we call soundness or fairness of judgment; and thirdly, of a trained conscience and a cultivated taste. We think of the taste as cultivated in the study of literature, and of the conscience as trained especially in the school discipline. The tools of

THE TEACHing of MenTAL SCIENCE IN SCHOOLS.

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knowledge are the various aptitudes, skill in the use of languages, of the elements of science and mathematics and of the practical arts, like drawing and book-keeping. Now while we can think of certain studies. as leading to practical and useful results, and of certain other studies. as adapted to train the taste, I submit that the supreme note of a good education--which may be variously named reasonableness, fairness of judgment, wisdom, sophrosune-stands rather in relation to the teacher's method than to his subject-matter, unless indeed I ought to say that it is rather related to his character and personality as a man, than to any special activity he can exert as an educator. I do not think much good is accomplished by a minute analysis of studies as directed to practical, æsthetic or disciplinary ends, although such an analysis is quite the fashion in current pedagogic discussions. Therefore I will not enumerate the actual and possible academic branches and assign some fancied value to each, but will repeat my thesis, that what especially distinguishes a person intellectually trained from a person intellectually untrained is that which comes from having been led through any departments of school work in accordance with good methods and by teachers of controlling force and earnestness of character.

Now we all agree that young persons have great facility of imitation and quickly form mental habits; so that, to the end that they may be formed to right mental processes and begin to acquire the habit of thinking justly, it is sufficient for them to be simply well taught in any of the usual school branches. Young pupils, and I mean by young pupils all the lower three-fourths of our high schools, as ages go-must be the objects of a good applied psychology, possessed in principle by the teachers, and used by the latter in their ministrations without a word of psychological terminology ever being uttered, or an invitation being extended for an act of mental introspection. This unconscious imbibition, not of mental science, of course, but of the fruits of mental science, is very important in early education, because, whatever the content of the child's education is fated to be, his manner of thinking will be a large factor in the totality of his life. Whether this unconscious reception of influence, leading to the formation of good mental habits, should be followed, in secondary schools, by a confessed course of mental science, in the erotematic form, with prescribed hours and lessons, and with or without a text-book, seems to be one of our unsettled questions; for the practice in schools is not uniform.

It is curious to note that in Massachusetts very few high schools retain mental and moral science in their programmes. Formerly there were many such schools. In regard to these studies there has been a