forms of work of which drawing and sloyd are typical enough. In the high In the high school it appears in different kinds of schools, from manual training schools to high schools of commerce, of many different courses in the same school, in the introduction of many new studies,sometimes such as were formerly confined to the colleges, like economics and psychology, sometimes entirely new, like civics and nature study,-in the introduction of the principle of election, and in new methods of teaching. In colleges the general manifestation is not very different from that of the high schools, the immense extension of the elective system being the most noteworthy point.

I cannot pretend for an instant (it is obvious enough) to have the wide range of information, the mastery of fact, the appreciation of educational principle to discuss such matters thoroughly, nor if I had, would these pages be sufficient, or even the best place for such a discussion. But like every one else, I have been often forced to have some opinion on these matters, or, at least, to act as intelligently as might be upon them. Shall I send my children to a kindergarten? Shall I teach them the alphabet myself, if they are learning to read on some group system? Shall I advise teachers who ask my opinion to teach English grammar? Shall I insist rigorously on the uniform entrance requirements for students desiring to enter college? What position shall I take on administrative questions that involve the extension of the elective system? Shall I arrange my own college work so that every one shall have the same discipline, or vary it (according to the possibilities of a small college), so that it may appeal to the different natures in my classes? and so on. Some of these questions belong especially to the college professor, but some might come to any one. I am sorry if their simplicity is tedious, but every one likely to read these lines with interest will be able to think of others, perhaps much more to the real point.

For questions of this sort come to everybody who has anything to do with. education, either privately or professionally. They can all be answered, I believe, on much the same line of principle,

but as to the statement of that principle I often find myself in doubt. Special questions like these generally give rise in my mind to more general ones, of which it will be worth while to set down one or two, which often occur. They express, I think, different aspects of the same idea.

I. Is it better (we may ask) to pursue a disagreeable task to the uttermost, or to take always work that interests one?

2. Is it better to have one way of doing things and make every one do things in that way, or have each one work as best suits him?

3. Do any studies have a universal value, or will every study be most useful to the particular one who likes it best?

I am generally inclined to choose in each case the first alternative.

But as I decide thus, there comes to my mind at once the loving and devoted girl who is so absorbed in her little kindergarten she asks me reproachfully whether she has no place in the world. Then there is the high-school professor of chemistry, perhaps, or of civics, who can carry his pupils into regions of intense interest that will make them forget the playground. And I remember, too, the wonderful exhibitions of manual training schools, or of carpentry, basketry, drawing and painting in any school. Then there is the student of genius and ability in some especial line and no aptitude for others: he asks me if I would compel him to the hours of hopeless drudgery with which the dull ones in class plod on after the few brilliant ones amid the mass of the commonplace. Or there is the student who sees himself taught in a few years something that will give him bread and butter for a lifetime; or who sees himself able to pursue into the devious and minute wanderings the shy forms of truth that otherwise he can only see from afar. All these ask whether I would try to turn back the dial of time and read them out of existence.

I see and acknowledge all this. But the good is very often the enemy of the better. We may be often so pleased at our own condition that we cannot dream of anything more to the purpose. But

that does not mean that what we have is the very best.

No one can look seriously at the world to-day and not see that there is an immense tendency to the development of individuality. To this in itself no one could object: we are individuals and must be. With all the love, sympathy, devotion we may have for others, we must always be ourselves. Even the most unselfish of the world's beliefs is not without recognition of the fact. "Love your neighbour as yourself," says Christ, and the whole world for centuries fixed its mind on the first part of the command. At the end of the nineteenth century Maeterlinck announces calmly that the last part is just as important, that you cannot love your neighbour to any purpose unless you love yourself first. Sound or not, the interpretation is wonderfully characteristic of a century that begins in literature with Byron and ends with Nietzsche, or, perhaps, more accurately, if less spectacularly, with the thousand and one forms and presentations of the doctrine of living one's own life.

You see it everywhere: in religion the universal creeds have lost millions to the idea of liberalism, of each man's believing as he sees fit. In politics the cause of absolutism hardly exists in the presence of democracy, while democracy itself often enough openly and with calm. deliberation defies law. In commerce, business, industry it is certainly the day of the strong man. In art the domination of the schools is over, and every man does what is right in his own eyes, sure that the most extravagant individuality has a chance of hitting the public whim.

Every one knows all this, and few regret it absolutely, even in these particular manifestations. But with these manifestations go others. If the individual life in its higher moods has freer play than a hundred years ago, it is not the only element in man that is so favoured. Greatly as the opportunities have increased for the development of the higher nature, they are slight as compared with the increase of the opportunities for the less noble elements of our being. The opportunities for personal comfort, comfort,

amusement, gratification, are to-day such as they have never been before, and people to-day are availing themselves of such opportunities to the utmost. And with this use, not to call it abuse or indulgence, comes a weakening of power, because people easily get to feel that they have a right to the things that it is possible for them to get. There is no plan for reform urged to-day that is not likely to be met by the all-sufficient argument that if it be carried out it will be hard on somebody. somebody. If we close the saloons, it will be hard on people who want to drink. If we insist on Sunday observance, it will be hard on those who have no other day for amusing themselves. Let me live my own life, say the finer spirits of to-day: the great world says, Let me take mine ease in mine inn.

And with this vast increase of comfort, ease, luxury have come darker elements. Money becomes more desirable the more we can get for it: we can get much for money now, and we therefore want much money. It is needless to suggest how money is often made nowadays. All this is the present concomitant, perhaps not necessary, of individualism.

Under such circumstances, what is the position of Education? The Church says, We want to bring people to God: we are content to try every way, for if we can do that, we have done everything. The note of the Church to-day is not discipline, but opportunity. The Law says, We shall correct all wrong doing as it arises if we find that the laws that exist are not sufficient, we shall make others that will be. The note of the Law is not discipline, but regulation. Art says, We want expression of the finest that man is capable of: we know that for one great painter or poet there will be a million daubers or drivellers, but what of that? We need not bother about them. Art has its discipline certainly, but its note is freedom. And as for Science, nowadays, she certainly approves this constant development from homogeneous to heterogeneous.

What, however, does Education say? At present she says with the rest, Individuality: let us lead our own lives! But the note of Education always has been Discipline. If it comes to a choice be

tween the two-and many people think it has come to such a choice-which is the true note?

More and more people are beginning to feel the weight of too much liberty, often, it is true, of liberty on the part of others. More and more are people

AMERICANISM IN PHILOSOPHY

I

coming to see again the value of discipline. There is a great need of somehow teaching the idea that certain things absolutely must be, whether they please us, or interest us, or teach us, or not-must be for the good of all. Edward E. Hale, Jr.

For some years there has been developing what may fairly be called an American school of philosophy. Its leaders are Mr. C. S. Peirce and Professor William James. To the former is due the name "Pragmatism," by which it is chiefly known, signifying an ideal of thought, which values ideas for their results rather than their symbolism, and tests truth by empirical consequences rather than by a priori categories. In metaphysics, it adopts Pluralism in place of Monism; in ethics it chooses social efficiency in preference to inner perfectibility.

This school, it appears, is now to have At all events, the newly a text-book. made English version of Professor Höffding's The Problems of Philosophy* finds place at Harvard as the book of the course, in which Professor James develops his special views. To be sure, Professor Höffding counts himself a Monist; but his Monism is so modified (allowing, as he does, residua beyond the compass of the philosophical "continuities") that its expression is really admirably adapted to the Pluralist's need, while his notion of truth is all that the most exacting Pragmatist could require. And taken with the neat preface which Professor James furnishes, the book cannot serve better than as a text of the new philosophy.

The work contains but four chapters, and they deal, respectively, with the problems of consciousness, knowledge, being and values-the ethical and relig

*The Problems of Philosophy. By Harald Höffding. Translated by Galen M. Fisher. With a Preface by William James. The Macmillan Company, 1905.

ious problems being comprised in the latter. The author seeks to resolve these four into one, the problem of continuity, and in so doing to show their fundamental interdependence. At the same time, the various continuities are defined not as absolutes of existence, but as ideals; they are not philosophical fact, but philosophical aim. Hence (to quote Professor James), "an unfinished world, with all Creation, along with our thought, struggling into more continuous and better shape-such is our author's general view of the matter of Philosophy."

For the rest, the book is brief, clear and concise. It is not intended for students without some preliminary training in philosophy, and it is written to be studied rather than perused. The student who has mastered its pages will have achieved more than an introduction to an important phase of contemporary thought.

II

Of a more compendious scope is Professor Hyslop's Problems of Philosophy.* It is the outgrowth, he states, of the problems and perplexities of his students, and so may be said to be written en rapport with the classroom. Yet it is none the less systematically conceived, and it deals with the chief captions of metaphysics, beginning with the classification of the sciences and leading up to the question of the existence of God.

Though not at all pragmatic, Professor Hyslop's work may also be classed as an expression of Americanism. It evinces the American restlessness of the

*Problems of Philosophy, or Principles of Epistemology and Metaphysics. By James Hervey Hyslop. The Macmillan Company,

1905.

yoke of formalism, and voices the American demand that philosophy shall be clear and practical. Its author emphatically protests against the cloudy subtleties of the transcendentalists and the wile of words with which too often the metaphysical defensor fidei veils insincerities. He insists on downright thinking and outright expression. The reader who remembers what in his pre-initiate days. he fondly conceived philosophy to be, what in after time he painfully discovered it seldom is, will be agreeably surprised to find here a book dealing frankly and above board with the problems of human nature and destiny that most interest men.

Natural science, critical "common. sense" and practical idealism may be said to be the Leitmotif of Professor Hyslop's thought. He deprecates the epithet "Realist," as a metaphysical stigma, yet acknowledges his preponderant sympathies with the school of Realism. Hamilton, Spencer, Lotze and Kant are the chief modern influences of which he is conscious, and the collocation of names is suggestive of the dual respect for fact and logic which characterises the book.

Professor Hyslop's style is vigorous and clear, and should be readily intelligible to persons with even a small knowledge of philosophy, though the critical discussions necessarily imply acquaintanceship with the thought considered. The book will afford valuable collateral readings in philosophical courses, and even where instruction takes issue with it, it should prove a healthy foil. In certain ranges, as the discussion of Materialism and Spiritualism, it occupies unique territory.

III

It may seem something forced to classify Professor Santayana's implacable Hellenism as a third type of Americanism. Nevertheless, the protestant spirit, the resentment of magniloquent discourse, the insistence that philosophy shall be directly relevant to life as life really is, appear to be the actuating motives of his most recent work, The Life of Reason, and it is just these char

acters that are most typical of current cis-Atlantic thinking.

The intent of the new work is at once ambitious and modest. It is ambitious in that the author aims to lay bare the rational principles at the basis of the whole range of human experience, mutually to analyse man and nature in analysing the growth of reason. It is modest in that he conceives the outlines of this analysis to have been achieved, once for all, by the Greeks, so that it remains for a modern merely to interpret anew, in the light of fresher history, the meaning of ancient thought.

The phases in which The Life of Reason is manifested are indicated by the titles of the several volumes into which the work is divided. These are, successively, "Reason in Common Sense," "Reason in Society," "Reason in Religion," "Reason in Art," and "Reason in Science" (the last yet to appear). In the first of these is developed the general conception of human nature, as one of the more complex formations of the greater nature, as having "for its core the substance of nature at large," as progressive in its determinations, and as varying in historic manifestation. The aim of the later volumes is to show, through more concrete descriptions, how, in its various phases, the Life of Reason evolves in the ideal world an absolute authority; or, stated from the point of view of nature, how "the progressive organisation of irrational impulses makes a rational life."

The charm of Professor Santayana's writing and the piquancy of his thought are too familiar to need re-emphasis. The delicacy of his ironies is a subtle joy in the reading, while the occasional perverseness of his epigrams may be forgiven for the sake of their invariable point. Nor should it be supposed that there is wanting the matter of serious reflection. Few readers will turn from his pages without consciousness of some mental renovation, without a whetting of some blunted perception.

H. B. Alexander.

*The Life of Reason. I. Reason in Common Sense. II. Reason in Society. III. Reason in Religion. IV. Reason in Art. By George Santayana. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905.

COLLEGE DEBATING*

Public speaking, conducted officially and unofficially, has always been a characteristic exercise of the American college. The German universities pay little attention to it: you will find more "fechtmeistern" in the Minerva than professors "der offentlichen Rede." So also in the French faculties, though the French instruction in writing and in elocution is admirable. The English value good writing and speaking as much as we do, but they do not believe in the scholastic cultivation of rhetoric and oratory which is usual with us. Writing and speaking (like æsthetics) are with them more informally followed: they do not make a business of it, which may be a reason why they sometimes do it much better than we can.

In our own way, however, we have always followed public speaking. The traditional American college form is the oration. This exercise is now rarely heard, save at the commencements of our more conservative colleges and secondary schools. It is a curious form of expression, pretty well governed by necessities of circumstances and tradition, yet susceptible of many attractive effects and variations. The fact that nobody out of college speaks like a college orator does not deprive the college oration of possibilities as a literary form.

But the form of public speaking, which at present takes the interest of our students in the interval between football and baseball, is debating. Debating has always been a favourite occupation of the American; the present intercollegiate debate, though rather a conventional, formalised matter (except at the very best) is a perfectly legitimate outcome of national proclivities. At present debating is carried on by debating clubs and

*The Principles of Argumentation (Revised and Augmented). By George Pierce Baker and Henry Barrett Huntington. Boston: Ginn and Company.

Argumentation and Debate. By Craven Laycock and Robert Leighton Scales. York: The Macmillan Company.

New

The Lincoln and Douglas Debates, with Introduction and Notes. By Archibald Lewis Bouton. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

in college courses as well. In these latter something of a literature has grown up, to which the last months have added some volumes of interest.

For a foundation in debating, some people would say, one should have a good knowledge of logic, while others would suggest the topic, so important in law, of evidence. Treatises on these subjects which will be of any immediate use to the debater are at present entirely lacking: the American student commonly fills their places by a treatment of the rhetorical topic of argument, a part of the subject, which as long ago as the time of the Sophists and as shortly as that of Archbishop Whately, was a sort of Joseph's ear, and has now become almost a special discipline. It may be called argument by rhetoric only, for it considers only such matters as clearness, force, and gives no inkling of the logical nature of evidence, argument, or proof. The representative book on the subject has for some time been that of Professor George P. Baker, which has appeared within the year in a thorough revision by the author and Professor H. B. Huntington. Huntington. The book is an improvement in several respects: its fundamental definitions and remarks are made more consistent, its treatment of what used to be called the "special issue" is much improved, its treatment of evidence is much fuller and somewhat more practical, its system of brief-drawing is somewhat simplified and improved. In fact, the work is much bettered. The appendix of examples and exercises will be especially useful.

It is not unjust to the work of Professors Laycock and Scales to say that in so far as argumentation is concerned, it follows in general the plan laid down by Professor Baker. It varies somewhat in its treatment of evidence, and here it runs into difficulties. A statement of the traditional arguments from antecedent probability, sign and example is in itself of little use to the ordinary debater, because they are applicable only to matters of fact. Such questions rarely occur in ordinary argument or debate, which commonly deals with matters of expediency or judgment. In this respect and some others the book is hardly an