rent, professor of law in the university of Gand, conceived the idea of introducing into the primary schools of that city savings for the children. He went from school to school explaining to the masters and to the scholars the economic advantages, and especially the moral benefits of savings. Enticed by this sympathetic word and convinced, the children, sou by sou, brought their little savings to the master, who took for them a deposit book from the savings bank when they had collected a franc. Five years after, in 1871, among 10,671 pupils the number of deposit books was above 8,000, and since then the proportion has still increased.

This may be the germ of a transformation in the social system. Let the workman come to possess capital and he is at once converted to ideas of order; he becomes the enemy of all revolution which would take from him his hard-acquired sav. ings. But how to attain this result? By teaching saving in childhood in order that it may become a habit. Later when the bent of dissipation has been taken, better counsels are fruitless. Capital created by the workingman is the only capital that he knows how to save. It is in vain to make advances to workingmen, as Lassalle demanded or as the Emperor of Germany has done under the inspiration of M. de Bismarck; they will soon dissipate it because the aptitude for putting it to good use is wanting. The workingmen's societies, to which in 1848 the government made advances, were not slow in succumbing. Those only have maintained themselves, which like the Pioneers of Rochdale, have created their capital by dint of system. and economy. Academic savings, as one may see in the reports of M. de Melarce, have been introduced into different countries, notably into France, in many of the cities, and if it may be allowed to generalize, the benefits which will result are incalculable. What most grieves when one considers the condition of the working classes, is not so much the insufficiency of their wage as the bad use they too often make of it. A rise in the remuneration of labor ordinarily tends only to increase the outlay at the cabaret, and thus to degrade the workman. It is in vain that you preach economy to grown men. It is a virtue of habit, and it is in childhood that it must be inculcated.

By the initiative of M. Laurent there have also been estab

lished at Gand societies of workingmen, where the laborers in factories can gather to hear debates, to practice gymnastics, to sing songs, to play comedy, to read journals and books.* Soon he organized on the same plan four societies of workingwomen from the factories in different quarters of the city, where the young women find the same means of intellectual and moral culture. One can see in M. Laurent's book, so touching and instructive, Les Sociétés ouvrieres de Gand, the details of what has been accomplished in these associations of workingwomen, and the happy effects which they have produced. It is truly a work of Christian economy, as MM. Stöcker and Todt recommend it.

Without doubt many other articles of the programme of the evangelical-social party raise serious objections. But the general spirit is excellent. One cannot too often recall to the directing classes and even to the ministers of religion the duties of enlightened and practical charity imposed upon them by the position which they occupy. It is equally true that the action of the doctrine of Jesus in the world is not spent. Its enemies repeat that we can again see how religions die. I do not believe it. Dogma will occupy less of place, but moral and juridical influence will be increased. The faith of the "evangelical socialists" can be summed up in the words of Emanuel Fichte: "Christianity still carries in its bosom a power of renovation which is unsuspected. Up to the present, it has acted only upon individuals, and indirectly through these upon the state. But he who can appreciate its intimate action, whether as believer, or as independent thinker, will admit this, that it will become one day the internal and organizing force of society, and then it will reveal itself to the world in all the depth of its conceptions and in all the richness of its blessings."

*These societies have need of a building. M. Laurent has obtained for the work of academic savings the Guinard prize of 10,000 francs "set aside to reward the work or invention best adapted to ameliorate the material or moral condition of the working class." He gave this sum to aid in erecting a building and he has added to it the product of his rights as author of his great treatise on the civil law. An indefatigable intellectual workman, he gives to his brothers in manual labor the fruit of his semi-secular toil.

ARTICLE III.-MODERN EDUCATION: ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND ITS PERILS.

THE theme of the present essay is Modern Education in the three aspects of Research, Exposition, and Examination-or the Modern Instructor as a Student, a Teacher, and an Examiner of the work of his pupils.

The writer proposes to speak freely of the opportunities which pertain to each of these functions and of the special perils of each, in order that he may show how they should be combined in the ideal teacher and the perfect system of instruction. The range of his discussion will extend from the Kindergarten to the University, and consequently many of the thoughts which will be presented must be somewhat general in form, and sup pose some familiarity with the actual working of educational institutions and the practical exercise of the teacher's office.

We begin with the teacher as himself a learner, or Education as involving Research. It is a truism that we assert when we say that in order to teach one must first have learned. Clearly in order to impart, the giver must already have gathered for himself. A little reflection or a very little practice, will also convince the most sceptical that the teacher needs not only to learn what he desires to impart, but also how he may communicate it with the best success. Research in Education covers both these points. In regard to each, some important questions suggest themselves. The first is, how much ought the teacher to know in order to the highest success?

No one will question that the teacher should know something more than his pupil. Exactly how much it is not always easy to decide. Some contend that this something need be very little; indeed that it is better that the teacher in both the university and the primary school should be only a step or two in advance of his pupil. The opposite doctrine now prevails and in general should be accepted as true, viz., that the more a teacher knows and has thought upon any subject, the more successfully will he communicate to one who has learned and

reflected less than himself. It is conceivable, and now and then it is realized in fact, that even the rudiments of a science, a language, or an art may be taught with greater skill and effect by one who is most at home in their remotest applications, if everything else is equal. Those who contend that this should always happen, reason thus: The retailer of common-places which he does not comprehend, cannot teach with that authority which only comes from rational conviction. Genuine authority rests only on well-grounded opinions, and is derived from the facts and reasons to which the teacher appeals. A master in his art does indeed often withhold his reasons, but he none the less really follows a hidden logic which manifests itself in the lucid order of his statements, each of which prepares the way for its successor, and all together justify conviction.

He

Again it is urged: Teaching itself is an art, a consummate art, which like every other art should blossom out from science as the flower from the root. For this reason the master of a science should best understand how to teach it with success. alone can build up the edifice of knowledge from its foundations, so that it shall rise like an exhalation in fair proportions, and sometimes even to the sound of music before the instructed intellects and the delighted hearts of his pupils.

From these data the conclusion is confidently drawn by many that only the consummate philosopher is fit to teach the elements of knowledge to infant minds, and that education even in the nursery and the kindergarten has much to learn from scientific theories of teaching and training.

Both these conclusions are often dissipated by the stern ordeal of experiment. The consummate philosopher does not always prove to be the most successful defender and expounder even of his own discoveries. The clearest and most logical thinkers are by no means uniformly the best teachers. Why this should be, we have not far to seek. The accomplished philosopher is liable to measure the capacities of his pupil by his own. He is of all men the most incapable of anticipating the fickleness of his attention, the feebleness of his memory, and the narrowness of his intelligence. Perhaps his pupil may be slow to apprehend because the facts are unfamiliar or his powers of attention are unformed. To the teacher these facts are as com

mon as the faces of the household circle and he cites them or refers to them with the most tantalizing familiarity, while to the pupil they are like the strange faces in a bewildering crowd. What is true of the facts, is still more eminently true of their import and significance, of what they reveal to the intelligence that judges and reasons, that interprets, foretells, and invents. When the master moves at his slowest pace in finding similarities and suggesting analogies, the pupil must often run, and pant to keep abreast with what to himself, are deliberate and often tedious paces. When the instructor makes the simplest and most obvious transitions of thought, to his pupil he appears to take flying leaps over chasms deep and wide, into which his companion falls in helpless discouragement. Most noticeable and disheartening of all, the philosopher too often begins with the remote and general which he fails to justify and illustrate by the familiar and the individual. He forgets that the learner must invariably move from the individual to the general, from facts to principles, from examples to truths, that is, he must first be guided from starting-post to goal, before he can return from goal to starting-post.

We grant that the philosopher is in no sense disqualified for success as a teacher, simply because he is a philosopher. We even contend that ideally he alone is competent to teach, because he alone should understand principles and have the skill to apply them. But we cannot overlook nor deny the fact that he is often eminently unsuccessful, because he fails to distinguish the order of reflection upon knowledge when it has once been gained, and the order of imparting information to those ignorant, or of exciting thought in one who has never reflected. Failures of this sort are by no means confined to teach. ers by profession. They are observed in lawyers and preachers, in essayists and critics, in conversation and harangues, among those trained in the schools and those schooled only by life. While of all these classes it remains forever true that the man who would control the thinking of others must first have mastered his own, it is by no means uniformly true that the man who has mastered his own thinking is the most successful in helping his fellow-men to acquire or to think.

These remarks may explain and justify the statement that