of combination into view for a moment, common occurrence-it scarcely attracts what a perfect instrument has been the slightest notice. Were the newspaper formed by society and the state to realize above referred to partitioned off into the distribution of the products of labor. squares, each of which should represent Take the machinery of exchange known its portion of the labor of one of the peras money. Diversity of employment, and sons who had contributed to the work, it consequently skilled labor, depends upon would be found to be resolved into six, facility of exchange. Says a distinguish- eight, or perhaps ten thousand pieces, of ed writer on political economy: "By various sizes, small and great-the former means of money, the farmer, the miller, representing the men who had mined and the clothier, the butcher, the merchant, smelted the lead and iron ores of which the grocer, the newsdealer, and all other the types and presses had been composed, members of society, are enabled to effect and the latter representing the men and exchanges, even to the extent of purchas- boys by whom the distribution had been ing, in a postal card, for a single cent, made. Numerous as are these little scraps their share of the labors of thousands of human effort, they are, nevertheless, and ten thousands of men employed in all combined in every single sheet, and making railroads, engines and cars, and every member of the community may, transporting upon them, annually, hun- for the trivial sum of fifty cents per andreds of millions of letters; or for an- num, enjoy the advantage of the informaother cent they may purchase their share tion therein contained, and as fully as he of the labor of the hundreds, if not thou- could do had it been collected for himsands, of men who have, in various man- self alone." ners, contributed to the production of a penny newspaper. What an immense combination has to be made before a single copy of the newspaper can be produced! There are the coal, iron ore and lead miners, furnace-men, machine-mak ers, rag-gatherers, casters, bleachers, makers of bleaching powders, paper-makers, railroad and canal men, type-makers, compositors, pressmen, authors, editors, publishers, newsboys, and a host of others, all combining their efforts for the production in market of a heap of newspapers that has, on the instant of production, to be divided off into portions suited to the wants of thousands of customers. Each of the latter pays a single cent, and then, perhaps, shares his paper with a dozen others, so that the cost to each reader is, perhaps, no more than one cent per week; and yet each obtains his share of the labors of each and all of the persons by whom it was produced. "Of all the phenomena of society, this process of division, subdivision, composition and recomposition, is most remarkable; and yet-being a thing of such This example, which Mr. Carey has furnished us, illustrates some of the effects of the machinery of combination. Each works for all, and all for each. Every vessel that crosses the ocean, and every laborer on the distant plantation in Cuba or Brazil, or even by the far-off Nile or Ganges, every manufacturer in Birmingham or Manchester, affects the well-being of the coal miner or wheat grower in Illinois or Wisconsin. He is comforted and cheered by the tea and coffee, nourished and sustained by the fruits, grains and spices, the cotton and silk and linen, that have traveled to him from round the earth. Nay, the very drugs that make life possible in a malarious climate are grown from six to twelve thousand miles hence. The relation is reciprocal; and every stroke which the Illinois coal miner strikes with his pick-ax affects the price of coal in all the markets of the world, and the price of coal affects the price of all other commodities. Now what we attempt to give in the school is not a direct initiation into this realm of practical combination, but, on the contrary, we aim to initiate the people cational systems becoming more cosmointo the "conventionalities of intelli- politan, more potent in reaching the indigence"-the means of theoretical combi- vidual, and more certain in their effect nation. The study of reading, writing, upon his enlightenment. ar.thmetic, geography and grammar, shall open the doors to the spiritual empire over nature. It is the province of the school to elevate the pupils into clear insight, so that they may discern a practical solution to the problem of life in the shape it assumes now, Without this insight the young American gropes dimly, gradually learning, through long years of bitter experience, that in resisting law he resists himself; that in seeking independence through pure self-will and caprice, he comes to abject slavery; that the true freedom is to be obtained only through subordination of self. This brings us to the third point of consideration—the influence of the state upon the function of education. | In a state which rests upon the patriarchal form of government, like China, the duties of children to parents, of the younger to the elder, of subjects to the emperor, constitute the staple of education. To learn subordination to the elder or higher in rank is to learn the lesson of life. More or less, under all governments in the old world, this subordina. tion of man to some accident of history, to some element of time and space, is and must be a part of education. Something alien to his true freedom must remain and he cannot dissolve it. In India, education consists in learning the ceremonies and observances peculiar to one's caste. For in that country everything depends upon what caste one belongs to. In Athens æsthetic culture was prized above all; in Sparta, martial training; in Rome, to sacrifice one's self for the glory of the state. All modern states are founded on a broader basis than any of these; they are mostly based on the Christian idea, and as they approach the ideal of man as taught in that religion, we find their edu To inquire what is the province we at tempt to occupy with popular education in America, and what are its bearings upon the previous epochs of history, becomes a question of great interest. The separation of church and state, a cardi nal principle in this nation, has wrought manifold changes. The countries of Europe are in all stages of progress in this respect. Wherever, as in England until quite recently, the principle is not acknowledged, the cause of popular edu cation does not flourish. In 1850 an American said, with great force: "The parliament that voted £100,000 of the nation's money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but £30,000 to spare for the education of her people. While Oxford and Cambridge shine with wealth and splendor, and the nobility and gentry are educated in all that goes to make the masterly scholar and the finished gentleman, no honor attends the educators of the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at public charge." "In Rome and England great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by the state itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic education of a certain class, to produce the national priests and the national gentlemen." The result is obvious; the parish records of England tell us that onethird of the couples joined in marriage are unable to sign their names to the marriage contract. (The new system of popular education, lately inaugurated there, will change all that within a generation.) The same condition exists in France. The reports of 1863 tell us that out of every one hundred men, twentyeight could not sign the marriage contract, and forty-three out of every one hundred women were completely illiterate. When the state is not founded on a democratic idea -a government for all from age to age, in the ratio that the patrithe people and by all the people —educa- archal principal gets eliminated from tion cannot be universal. Such educa- society. tion in England, or France, or Italy, would overturn, in one generation, all the class privileges that lie at the basis of their governments. Only when the state is founded upon the distinct and explicit recognition of the inherent rights of all men to partake in the highest functions of their race, can education be permitted in its normal scope. Our own form of government professes to rest on this foundation. It is its selfproclaimed object to secure to every man his right to govern himself. Every man shall reap the fruit of his own deed. The state decrees that the individual shall have as much justice meted out to him as be is able to mete to himself. An American shall not be treated like an infant, and have good laws without making them. He shall make his own laws, and if they are not good ones he shall smart for it until he learns how to make good ones. Better not so cheap, better not so wisely governed, provided the people be self-governed. Monarchies are doubtless cheaper, doubtless not so corrupt, as republics; but the great end of all government is the elevation of mere individuals to the dignity of self-directive persons; the concentration of the realized products of all in each. Hence the self-determination of the individual is the object of all gov ernment. No doubt an infant can be carried in the arms of the nurse more gracefully and with greater economy of time, but we prefer that he should learn to walk by himself. Such principles as these have penetrated our system of ped agogy. When children are to be brought up to simple, implicit obedience to the ruler of the state, and are never to expect a share in making the laws that govern them, the predominant influence in their education tends to produce subordination to authority. The self-will must, in all cases, be broken, and at all hazards. Children must be taught to obey for its own sake, and a life of obedience is thus prepared for. But in a country where self-rule is the destiny of every citizen, a different culture is required. Self-rule does not mean arbitrariness, for this is anarchy, or, rather, the rule of passion. Self-rule is the government of re180», and implies conviction in place of caprice. Therefore, discipline should act on the conviction of pupils. If punishment is to be administered, the pupil is to feel that he is the cause of his own pain, and that the infliction. An appeal to the reason and teacher is an unwilling instrument in its sense of honor in a pupil can be made only by placing some trust in his conviction of what is reasonable. Hence, we find, not only in America, but also in Europe, the current of popular sentiment to-day setting in favor of a system of school government that avoids such collisions with pupils as tend to excite their baser natures. The teacher has achieved success when he has learned to govern his pupils through their own convictions. This is the truly moral culture which popular education more and more aims to achieve. The conviction that each doer reaps the result of his own deed, - and that every deed must be a positive character, or else it will come back inju riously on the doer- - the substitution of rational action for that of selfish passion - these are inseparable; the former, the principle, the latter, its practica! result. This discipline secures for the pupil selfrestraint from the outset. It trains him The school is the theatre in which the transition takes place from obedience to external authority into free action from personal conviction. For this reason school government necessarily involves two elements, coercion and moral suasion; and the relative amount of each changes, to renounce the whims and caprices of the moment for the sake of his own rational | well-being. A great and continual incitive to this state of feeling is our form of government. The separation of the different branches, the independent organization of the legislative, judiciary and executive powers, removes the possibility of arbitrary personal influence to such an extent from the supreme power of the land, that intolerance of such influence in subordinate spheres gains constantly upon the commuity. (a). The legislative power makes the general law; that any one should break it and incur punishment does not excite any personal feelings on the part of any one of the legislators. The criminal cannot blame the legislature for his punishment; the law was made before he committed his crime, and was made for his own protection, and for the protection of all. The individual legislator feels sorry at the fate of the individual criminal; he harbors no hate against him. The collision between the old and new modes of school management has brought the pedagogue into an unenviable light in modern literature. No one of us here but shudders at the mention of such monsters as Ichabod Crane,Erasmus Holiday, Old Squeers, Treacle or Gradgrind. Tyranny, petulancy, irritability, dogmatism and pedantry are charged to the account of the pedagogue by his accusers - Scott, Dickens, Goldsmith and Irving - and he must bear this imputation until he learns to govern his pupils through their own convictions. No one will contend, for a moment, that a school can get along without good order. But mere outward quiet is not good order; pupils must conspire with the teacher and not against him. In these days it may be affirmed that he who cannot govern his school without tyrannical thoughts, words or acts, cannot govern it at all. He has mistaken his vocation. The teacher who knows his art will find the most powerful levers in the pupil's own disposition. It is patent to all observers that this is an age of rapid decay for all sorts of external authority. The man who attempts to rule by rough personal demeanor, by imperious brow-beating and bullying, is quickly thrust aside from high positions. There never before was so frequent a triumph of this principle as in our late war. Dogmatic, bullying officers were, in most instances, displaced by those whose personal popu- Everywhere the criminal encounters larity indicated high esteem on their only the impersonal presence of justice, part for the convictions of their fellow- and nowhere the arbitrary despotic will. soldiers. People in this age demand to Such is the great complex organic inbe shown the grounds of conviction; strument that we have realized in our they are jealous even of advice as to prac-state for the security of liberty and justical conduct. Show me that this course injures me and mine and you have done sufficient. I do not wish to listen to your exhortations not to injure myself and others. Such things are presupposed as the basis of all conviction of whatever sort. (b.) The judge applies the law; the criminal cannot blame him any more than he can the legislator. He knows that the judge did not make the law by which he (the criminal) is condemned. The judge has no hatred in his breast; he only does his prescribed duty without fear or favor, and without arbitrariness or malice. (c.) The executive officers who carry out the sentence, are polite and friendly. They neither made the law nor applied it; they only execute it, and are bound to show no personal feeling in the matter. tice. In the prevailing spirit of such a government, there is no place left for imperious individuality to manifest itself. The individual can manifest itself with impunity only in the shape of benignant sympathy and counsel for the erring. This spirit penetrates society and makes is like one "who lays down his ear to more certain every day the triumph of the the ground-swell of humanity, and as he new order of school discipline. Mr. listens to the tide of history moving on Squeers and old Treacle must give place to the realization of the divine event, supto the generous-hearted friend of youth, poses its low murmur, as it meets with whose very presence stimulates his pupils the sandbars that obstruct its progress, to to noble efforts, and whose atmosphere be nothing but the pulse-throbbing of his elevates all above the plane where the own ears!" That which has grown out degrading influence of the rod is re- of a religion as its most positive form, is quired. not likely to prove negative to it; nor can the exclusion of all sectarian doctrine from the public schools prevent the system from being essentially the greatest adjunct of religion. For religion demands the free insight of the soul as its normal condition, and, without it, it cannot lift itself above superstition. In considering the spirit of our discipline in the school, we observe the tendency to substitute methods that appeal more to the free personal conviction of the pupil in place of the old plans of coercion. The contrast of our system is most marked with that of China. There the whole life and education is one of prescription. Dead formalities reign in affairs of the greatest moment as well as in the most trivial concerns of life. Even their alphabet is an iron mould which reacts on all the people, forcing them when young and plastic into prescriptive This new spirit in education is more truly the Christian spirit than the one it replaces; and this for the reason that it secures to a greater extent the development of self-control on the part of the pupil. The cardinal virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice, all involve as their basis, self-control in some one of its forms. The seven deadly sins, on the other hand, are different species of excess occasioned by yielding to the appetites and passions. In proportion as the pupil learns the lesson of self denial, and has acquired that energy of character which enables him to sacrifice the ease and pleasure of the moment in order to gain reasonable ends, he has formed a moral basis for himself. Nor is this culture alone moral. I may with truth affirm that it is religious. I am aware that the remark is frequently made that public schools are anti-religious " inhabits, compelling each one to rely on spirit. If "anti-sectarian" is meant by that term, I will readily concede its injustice; but when it is intended to mean atheistical, or even anti-christian, I repudiate it. What a narrow view of the workings of providence that man must have, who thinks his religion so superficial a thing as to be easily left out of a course of study! Who does not know that his religion is the very life-blood of the civilization that is ruling the world and dissolving all alien forms by its resistless might; what kind of a Christian is he who is forever afraid that in the march of enlightenment his dogmas will will be all over-thrown and himself left creedless and forlorn! His faith is not equal to a grain of mustard seed. He his memory, and to seek his guiding principle in something external. The young Chinese begins to learn to write by memorizing the shape of a complex sign for the first word, and another for the second, and so on until he has memorized several thousand before he can graduate as a scribe. He very naturally becomes a copyist in everything he does. The hand of Confucius, reaching down through twenty-five centuries, holds him firmly in the prescribed path. Oriental forms of society generally fix the status of the individual far more definitely than do the Western. Had you been born in Hindostan, the son of a Sudra, you were predestined to the basest of employments. Your neighbor, the |