education would be admirable. The literary, aesthetic, religious and even morality as an ideal system of perfection, are all decorative merely. The intelligent anthropoid ape's desire for decoration would be satisfied with coloured ribbons and straw which please the village idiot, and would rightly be postponed to material necessities. Man's function on earth, we believe, is to use his environment as a mere basis for higher things-the things by which men truly live, and these must from the first and all through, constitute the substance of his education.

Assuredly, we all hope never to be, and never to meet, that incorporation of the elements of all the sciences which Mr Spencer calls a man, even though endowed with the prudential bourgeois morality which by the help of the police keeps things going. A classical prig and pedant is bad enough, but, after all, he is in touch with the best in humanity: the prig pedant who has fed on the dry crumbs of science since he was a baby would be wholly intolerable. There is surely some other ideal of the completely educated man which carries us far beyond the sphere of "complete living" in the Spencerian sense. The total inadequacy of sense-realism to conceive such a theory will I think be well illustrated by turning to Mr Spencer's special treatment of Moral Education which has not so far as I know been subjected to adverse criticism, attention having for the most part been directed to the intellectual part of his treatise.

But before doing so I would say that Mr Spencer's chapter on Method, although it is, perhaps because it is, a collection of recognized precepts lucidly and logically put, is well worthy of the perusal, both of teachers and theorists.

Moral Education.-A Criticism.

I heartily concur with Mr Spencer, both in the beginning and the conclusion of his chapter on 66 Moral Education." His "The subject

first paragraph concludes with this utterance :

I re

which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in which education should `culminate, is the Theory and Practice of Education." We cannot, of course, teach boys and girls at school how to discharge their duties as parents: at the school age, such instructions could have no link of association with the knowledge and experience of the boy and girl, and would, therefore, be wholly futile. We teach children these, their future duties, by being ourselves an example to them, which they will remember and imitate: nothing in education is so potent as tradition early received. But when Spencer suggests that the education of young men and women should culminate in the study of education—that is to say, of moral education— I think he gives utterance to a novel idea, which is not to be set hastily aside because of its novelty. Perhaps it will one day be accepted as a truism—at least as regards young women. member, many years ago, being much impressed, but, of course, not surprised, when I beheld young ladies hurrying in considerable numbers to University lectures in Logic, Latin, Mathematics, and Physiology, while the subject which most nearly concerned the future life of more than ninety per cent. of them, viz., Education, was taken only by the few who meant to be school teachers. It will not always be so. Mothers of the wealthier classes will tell us that they have no time for the training of their children; the demands of society are too exacting to admit of it. The day will come, if the race is to make progress, when it will be the other way about, and "Society" will have to content itself with taking a second place, while the duties of the nursery and the parlour will make good their prior claim. If the mother, though never the sole, yet always (theoretically, at least) the chief educator, is unfit for these duties, as is too commonly the case, it is just as well that she should delegate them, for, as Spencer truly says, "The defects of children mirror the defects of their parents -a remark to be extended, I need scarcely say, from the parent to the teacher. That the teacher who professes to be an educator should study education

before he enters on his task would seem to be a proposition beyond all question, and yet it is still questioned by not a few survivals of a passing generation at Eton and elsewhere.

Mr Spencer adverts to the irrational severity of domestic discipline, but he omits the still greater evils which flow from the training which is irrationally indulgent. In this respect Locke takes a much firmer and more profound view of the relation between parent and child, though he errs in the excessive severity which lies at the foundation of his system of moral training. We are not to suppose that over-indulgence is limited to the well-to-do; it is even more common among the poorvaried, of course, with fits of passion. The following incident (a part of my own personal experience) sums up the attitude of the indulgent maternal mind:

"Why do you not send your children to school?" said the minister to a fisherwoman in a Banffshire village.

"Because they dinna want to gang," answers the mother. "But, surely, it is not what they want that you should think of, but what is good for them."

"Oh, puir things," retorts the mother, "they maun hae their ane wull, for it's a' we puir folk hae to gie them”!

So far, I say, we shall concur with Mr Spencer. But now he plunges into a sea of error, putting what he has to say, however, in a way so lucid, pleasant, and seeming-logical as to seduce the young reader into the acceptance of a fatal doctrine-a doctrine, moreover, which, if understood and held, degrades the position, by degrading the aims and work, of the educator. He discusses the end or aim of moral education, and the relation of this end or aim to an ideal morality and an ideal system of training. Adaptation to environment governs all he says in the moral, as it did in the intellectual, education of the young.

Here I shall let Spencer speak for himself before I proceed to criticize his position :

"Even were there methods by which the desired end [the

practice of an ideal system of morality] could be at once effected, and even had fathers and mothers sufficient insight, sympathy, and self-command to employ these methods consistently, it might still be contended that it would be of no use to reform family government faster than other things are reformed. What is it we aim to do? Is it not that education, of whatever kind, has for its proximate end to prepare a child for the business of life-to produce a citizen who, while he is well-conducted, is also able to make his way in the world? And does not making his way in the world (by which we mean, not the acquirement of wealth, but of the funds requisite for bringing-up a family)-does not this imply a certain fitness for the world as it now is? And if by any system of culture an ideal human being could be produced, is it not doubtful whether he would be fit for the world as it now is? May we not, on the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of rectitude, and too elevated standard of conduct, would make life intolerable or even impossible? And, however admirable the result might be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so far as society and posterity are concerned? There is much reason for thinking that, as in a nation so in a family, the kind of government is, on the whole, about as good as the general state of human nature permits it to be. We may argue that, in the one case, as in the other, the average character of the people determines the quality of the control exercised. In both cases it may be inferred that amelioration of the average character leads to an amelioration of system; and further that, were it impossible to ameliorate the system without the average character being first ameliorated, evil rather than good would follow. Such degree of harshness as children now experience from their parents and teachers may be regarded as but a preparation for that greater harshness which they will meet with on entering the world. And it may be argued that, were it possible for parents and teachers to treat them with perfect equity and entire sympathy, it would but intensify the sufferings

which the selfishness of men must, in after life, inflict on

them.

"But does not this prove too much?' someone will ask 'If no system of moral training can forthwith make children what they should be-if, even were there a system that would do this, existing parents are too imperfect to carry it out—and if, even could such a system be successfully carried out, its results would be disastrously incongruous with the present state of society-does it not follow that to reform the system now in use is neither practicable nor desirable?' No. It merely follows that reform in domestic government must go on pari passu with other reforms. It merely follows that methods of discipline neither can be nor should be ameliorated except by instalments. It merely follows that the dictates of abstract rectitude will, in practice, inevitably be subordinated by the present state of human nature-by the imperfections alike of children, of parents, and of society-and can only be better fulfilled as the general character becomes better.

"At any rate, then,' may rejoin our critic, 'it is clearly useless to set up any ideal standard of family discipline. There can be no advantage in elaborating and recommending methods that are in advance of the time.' Again we contend for the contrary. Just as in the case of political government, though pure rectitude may be at present impracticable, it is requisite to know where the right lies, in order that the changes we make may be towards the right instead of away from it; so, in the case of domestic government, an ideal must be upheld, that there may be gradual approximations to it. We need fear no evil consequences from the maintenance of such an ideal. On the average, the constitutional conservatism of mankind is strong enough to prevent too rapid a change. Things are so organized that, until men have grown up to the level of a higher belief, they cannot receive it; nominally they may hold it, but not virtually. And, even when the truth gets recognized, the obstacles to conformity with it are so persistent as to outlive