The discussion of Prof. OLNEY's paper was opened by Dr. D. B. HAGAR, of the State Normal School, Salem, Mass. He said the country-school problem presented different aspects in the different States. He dissented from the position of the lecturer upon the proposition that young men in order to enjoy the right of suffrage should pass an examination in the common-school branches. The establishment of a uniform system would be impracticable. He was not clear that any system of graduating diplomas from the lower schools can be devised that will universally admit to the Higher schools. He recommended not town schools but a head master for the schools of the town.

DR. RICHARD EDWARDS, of Illinois, believed that the people would manage their own schools; and they must be educated to apprehend and desire the best appliances and best methods. The drift of MR. EDWARDS's remarks was against centralization. The Hon. J. H. SMART, of Indiana, favored more centralization. He pointed out some of the evils of having the schools controlled by the people. Wм. E. CROSBY, of Iowa, said we have already solved the problem of centralization in city schools. He had not found the politicians when properly approached, jealous of the schoolmaster. He said the laws of Iowa require a four-weeks' institute to be held annually in each county. The entire point is the permanence of teachers. He thought much could be done by the action of this Association and the State Association. The HON. R. D. SHANNON, of Mo., said the one thing necessary in Missouri to place the State in a front rank, is efficient Supervision. The people are so grounded in their love for education that they will let nothing stand in the way of their progress. Supervision was also needed over the public funds. Millions have been squandered. We are somewhat jealous of centralization. MR. SMITH, of Illinois, a county Superintendent, said country schools cannot be carried on in the same manner as village or city schools. The chief thing in the country is the permanent employment of the teacher. .

W. A. BELL said he did not believe a word of what the last gentleman said, but he did believe all that the others had said, except retiring teachers on half-pay. C. C. ROUNDS said:-It was idle to talk of the profession of teaching when schools are in session three months in a year. Teachers cannot live on three-months' pay. Z. RICHARDS favored agitation and discussion.

The HON. W. H. RUFFNER was excused by request from reading the following paper on

THE MORAL ELEMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. Nearly thirty years ago an eminent English philosopher proposed to erect the laws of character into a science, and to call it Ethology. I do not know that the idea has been developed, except in the speculations of phrenologists, sociologists, and expounders of heredity. But undoubtedly we shall one day have a special science treating of the laws which regulate the formation of character. No one doubts that every man is what he is as the result of the operation of laws; and however diverse may be human characters, they have all been formed under the same laws. All systematic training of children is a recognition of this

principle. And, as DR. CHALMERS has shown in his Institutes of Theology, such statements are not invalidated by the fact that God's Spirit may be one of the factors in the operation; for that spirit uses, and does not dispense with, the laws of man's mental constitution.

It is not easy to construct this science, or it would have been done long ago; but the clue is in hand when we see that its formative principles lie in the domain of psychology, and that the work to be done is the accommodation of these principles to this special subject,

Hence the doctrines of Ethology have been recognized as "middle principles" (the axiomata media of Lord Bacon); principles which, as Bacon observes, constitute the chief value of every science, because in them science becomes exact and useful.

Ethology will lead us to study the origin and sources of all those qualities in human beings, whose assemblage makes up what we call character, and its object is "to determine from the general laws of mind, combined with the general position of our species in the universe, what actual or possible combinations of circumstances are capable of promoting or preventing the production of those qualities" (J. S. MILL).

Logically, the evolution of this science should precede that of sociology; because, in learning the laws under which individual character is formed, we have the master principles on which society is formed. And whilst the salient points of society tempt bold students like BUCKLE and SPENCER to plunge directly into the tangled wilderness of sociology, the cautious thinker, who measures his task before he undertakes it, will see that he who undertakes sociology, before the differentiation of Ethology, will die like BUCKLE in the wilderness, exclaiming, "My Book, my Book!"

As soon as Ethology takes the scientific form, it will be immediately used as the foundation of pædeutics, and be adopted as the cardinal branch in Normal study. In this science, and in its deduced system of education, will appear, as a prominent branch, the Laws and Rules of Conduct; and this is nothing more or less than Ethics, pure and simple. Ethics is, philosophically, a branch of Ethology, just as Ethology is a branch of Psychology. Ethics proper, does not include jurisprudence, politics, or the law of etiquette, just as Ethology does not include sociology or national character. Ethics deals only with the individual, and tells him how he ought to behave himself. So that those few school laws which remembered that there was something worth teaching besides the six primaries, and added “Good Behaviour" as a thing to be taught in the schools, really struck upon exactly the right word-behaviour—for requiring the teacher to put Ethics into his programme, without using an alarming word. Ethics will soon cast off those endless discussions about the Freedom of the Will and the Nature of the Moral Faculty, and hand them over to Psychology, where they properly belong. For what is the Will, but the mind determining what it will do? and what is Conscience, but the mind acting on moral subjects? Could the distinction be broadly drawn between Ethics proper and Ethical Psychology, and then could the grounds of ethical obligation be made part second in every ethical treatise, it would be found that there is something in Ethics which a boy can understand before he reaches the Senior class of a college course.

Unload Ethics of its foreign matter, and it becomes simply Rules of Conduct. Its elements are simpler than the four rules of Arithmetic, or rather than the two fundamental principles, adding and subtracting, out of which grow all arithmetical operations, and which become complicated only when applied to complicated problems. Such is Ethics-a few simple rules of conduct which any child can learn, but which become difficult of application when applied to complicated questions. Notorious as moral philosophers are for their debates on incidental questions, they are remarkably agreed on what constitutes the ethical code. They will debate as to why men ought to do right, but not as to what is right. And even the differences as to the ground of moral obligation seem to be nearing an adjustment.

There will always be men in every department of science who will ignore the Author of Nature, chiefly because they regard science as dealing only with second causes; and in Ethics such men are satisfied, when they find that moral actions have their roots in man's nature and relations; but the idea is gaining even with that class of thinkers, that not only is it illogical and irreverent to leave out of view the will of the Ruler of the Universe, but that as a matter of moral dynamics, stronger motives are needed than those of Egoism, Hedonism, or Utilitarianism, in order to make any of these systems operative.

But educators need not hesitate as to the propriety of appealing to the will of God as the ultimate authority in matters of conduct, although they may not always feel at liberty to determine for their pupils how that will is to be ascertained. There is perhaps no question in the moral world on which mankind are and always have been so nearly unanimous as this, viz: that God's will is absolute authority in moral matters. Deference for eccentricities of religious opinion will have become an intolerable vice when any school teacher hesitates to acknowledge the existence or the authority of the blessed God and Father of us all.

In the prosecution of our idea, the first work needed is the codifying of the moral doctrines of the country-and that in various forms, and with various depths of fulness, suited to schools of various grades, suite also to family use, and to the wants of the grown man who rarely passes a day in which some difficult question of morals does not arise. Touch life where you will, you touch a moral nerve; and yet often the moral principle involved is so subtle and so ramified with others that, like the aching nerve of the bodily system, you may feel the pain but cannot detect the seat of your trouble.

Ethics must begin with the "Categorical Imperatives," as KANT calls them, and follow with the simple applications thereof; and gradually advance into the region of complex and conflicting motives and principles, where the subtle vices of society reside, and are covered beneath the surface of a high respectability.

Now and then only these respectable vices bring down a fair name, and the world is astonished as it is when some well-conditioned bodily frame is suddenly prostrated by a hidden disease which had hung out no sign of its fatal mining.

All pervaded as society is by moral evils of every grade, how amazing that society should be without a moral code, without a statute book, without a moral Blackstone or Kent.

You are perhaps startled at this statement, but if there is one such book known to society, name it, name it. The Bible, you say. But is the Bible a code? No, no more than it is a body of divinity, or a catechism. The Bible is a collection of sacred books written by many authors, scattered along the track of fifteen centuries. It blazes with moral principles, but they are scattered like physical facts over the face of Nature. And like the scattered parts of a tangram they must be brought together before they are seen to be a symmetrical whole. Numbers too are staring us in the face always, but numbers become powerful only when made into arithmetic. There is a grammar in all human speech-there is geographic truth in every foot of the earth's surface-but before geography and grammar can be taught properly, their principles and facts must be systematized. And so, abundant as are the materials of ethics, we need the systematic moral code as the instrument of effective moral teaching.

The services of the Church in this direction are not forgotten or undervalued. To her society is chiefly indebted for its general moral soundness and growth. But the teaching of casuistry is only incidental to the mission of the Church, which is to fill men with the powers of the world to come. A pure life on earth is of course required, and the broad principles by which that life is to be regulated are announced and insisted upon; but the carrying of ethical principles into the minutie of life was not only not enjoined upon the Church, but the example of Christ and his apostles shows that the Church was expected to avoid that very thing. It was thus only that the Church could become cosmopolitan-thus only that she could win all men to Christ, and save herself from endless persecution. And such was her modest practice until she allied herself with the State, and assumed a sort of universal directorship in regard to human affairs, for which she had no commission from her Lord and Master. And the whole of Christendom to-day suffers in many ways from the effects of this union of Church and State-and one of the evils is just this which we are considering. The Church having in past ages undertaken to be the casuistical monopolist of the world, society has been left without a moral code. Morality and religion have points of close contact, but they are as different as terrestrial gravitation from solar attraction. The one is terrestrial, the other is celestial; and the glory of the terrestrial is one, but the glory of the celestial is another. The Church has nobler work than to be discussing the rate of interest a man may get for his money. The Church may say -ought to say with the voice of an angel--be honest, and truthful, and pure, and gentle-but she cannot follow those grand principles into their ramifications. If she does she will weaken her hold upon men-she will obscure the awful light of eternity. Moreover, she will blunder and often make herself ridiculous, as did Pope Calixtus III. when he solemnly issued his bulls against the comet, as she has many times done when dabbling in things not written. As long as she has a "Thus saith

the Lord" at her back, men will bow in reverence, but when she comes down to little criticisms and casuistries about which there is no "Thus saith the Lord," and there is room for differences of opinion, she soils her skirts, and sacrifices her prestige.

Let the Church give men right principles, and let the schools systematize them, and develop for themselves and for society those details which shall inform and guide men in their daily life and be made a part of the scheme under which the young are educated.

It is not forgotten that much is wanted in moral training besides a text-book-a good mother, a good pastor, a good teacher, a good discipline, favoring circumstances, "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little," and all that. Moreover, mental training is moral training to a certain extent; and the failure to recognize this has occasioned much needless concern among good people, especially in reference to public schools. Though there may be no special moral or religious training, the ordinary exercises of a well-conducted school are highly ethical in their influence. And when the teacher is hightoned, his personal influence is elevating upon his pupils. And there is a great deal of miscellaneous moral instruction given in every school as well as in every good home. It is only proposed in this paper to do systematically what is now done unsystematically, and hence incompletely; to accept ethics as a study. It is claimed that the subject is at least as important and susceptible of school-room treatment as geography or arithmetic. And that, for the same reason that a child ought not to be left to pick up his arithmetic as he may, he ought not to be left to pick up his morals as he may. It is, of course, desirable that parents should look after their children's improvement, both morally and intellectually, but parents may be incompetent or neglectful. Moreover, the idea of education is, that all its teachings shall be systematic; that it shall include the whole nature, moral, physical, and intellectual; and that it shall leave nothing to chance. If the teacher is expected to turn out an ethical character, he must have the ethical feature in his programme. He is not to be satisfied with incidental effects and incomplete results, or with occasional efforts. Children must understand that they are expected to behave themselves, not simply that they may not plague the master and disturb the school, but because behaviour is the great thing of all the things they have to learn; that morals are not subsidary to scholarship, but the reverse; that what a boy learns is not as important as what he does; and that, at the outcome of his school life, what he knows is not as important as what he is; that what he can do is of small consequence compared with what he is inclined to do and what he does.

The details of this moral work on the pupil are for consideration and experiment. As to the systematically-didactic part it should be both oral and textual. With advancing maturity the simplicities of elementary teachings may properly pass into the more complex conditions of life, where sound principles conflict with each other, and difficult problems beset every pathway. To a child nothing is more mysterious than the moral complications of life-nothing more impossible than the