This brings the commons to the point of believing that Brutus may be mistaken.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him with a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

When Antony said that Cæsar wept for the poor, the listeners may have said they had some doubt about it-they never saw him weep; but Antony appeals to their own senses -"you all did see" that he refused the crown. The truth of this fact by Antony goes to establish faith in his other utterances, and prepare the people to listen and believe.

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,

And, sure, he is an honorable man.

After appealing to their own senses to show that Cæsar was not ambitious, after gaining the confidence of the commons, Antony again places Brutus along side of Cæsar; but Brutus appears to much disadvantage, for his veracity is open to question.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know;

and the commons are prepared to hear Antony accuse Brutus of misrepresentation; but he makes no attack, simply referring to what he knows, and he could have added, "what you know, too."

You all did love him once, not without cause;

What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?

Antony thus adroitly revives their old affection for Cæsar, and in great grief appeals to their emotions:

O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason! - Bear with me;

My heart is in the co n there with Cæsar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

Possibly Antony paused because his emotions could not be controlled for further speech; but there is a diplomacy in his leaving off at this point, in releasing the attention of his audience, to let the people exchange views and feelings which had been suggested by his address. A suggestion works its way if it is but started right.

It is unnecessary to make a detailed study of the rest of the address. Antony soon resumed the speech, and makes a reference again to Brutus and the other "honorable men," and brings out

a parchment with the seal of Cæsar,

I found it in his closet, 'tis his will:

Let but the commons hear this testament,
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,

And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,

And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;

Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy

Unto their issue.

This is the strongest suggestion of self-interest, and the statement that the will would not be read makes the commons eager to hear it. Antony intensifies their clamor for the will, just as he intends shall be done by his suggestions, and grants their request, promising to read it. Before doing so, however, he gathers them around the dead body, and shows the bloody wounds made by the daggers of Brutus, Cassius, Casca, and others, until they are worked into a frenzy and are about to work revenge for Cæsar's death. Antony quiets them only to renew their rage with even greater intensity, he quiets them a second time by reminding them that they had not yet heard the will. They wait for the will, which Antony proceeds to read. Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal

To every Roman citizen he gives,

To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

The generosity of the great man, lying dead before them, arouses their desire for revenge, and causes another outbreak; but Antony quiets them again and continues:

Moreover, he hath left you his walks,

His private arbours, and new-planted orchards
On this side Tiber: he hath left them to you,
And to your heirs forever; common pleasures,
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.

Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?

The suggestion is completed, Antony released all constraint, "let slip the dogs of war," which ended in the defeat of the conspirators at Philippi. The Roman mob, transformed from followers of Brutus, whom they would crown, to an enraged mass of rioters seeking Brutus' death! Such is the law of association, such the power of suggestion.

The chief function of suggestion consists in presenting exemplary thought and action in such a way that they will be imitated. Parents seek for a teacher of good principles of conduct, chaste language, polite manners, that children may well imitate the teachers and form habits commendable to society. Older persons also are subject to the same influence, and we are all looking for some sanctuary

To keep us from corruption of worse men,

and to put us in touch with characters wiser and better than ourselves. What is known as personality is but the adroitness of suggestion, whether it be by superior knowledge, skillful method, or personal magnetism. Prince Edward feels the force of Queen Margaret's personality in her vigorous plea for courage:

Methinks a woman of this valiant spirit

Should, if a coward hear her speak these words,

Infuse his breast with magnanimity,

And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.

I speak not this as doubting any here:

For did I but suspect a fearful man,

He should have leave to go away betimes:
Lest in our need he might infect another,
And make of him like spirit to himself.
If any such be here, as God forbid!

Let him depart before we need his help.

3 Henry, VI, 4.

Friar Francis rests in hope on the power of suggestion to correct the wild suspicion of Claudio against the virtuous Hero:

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination;

And every lovely organ of her life

Shall come aparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving delicate and full of life,

Into the eve and prospect of his soul.

Much Ado, IV, 1.

And thus the industry, the knowledge, the intuitive powers, the ideals, of the Stratford Schoolmaster, under the law of association, the principles of suggestion, are held in view until "the idea of his life shall sweetly creep" into the character of every reader.

Current Educational Thought

THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER'S SYMPOSIUM ON CURRENT EDUCATIONAL METHODS

Bailey Millard, the editor of the Sunday Examiner, in reading the editorial comment in the Literary West of Herbert Bashford, decided to secure an expression of opinion from leading educators. An interesting symposium was the result. President Jordan, President Wheeler, Joseph O'Connor, R. L. Webster, Frederic Burk, and Mrs. C. R. Pechin, were among the contributors. The following extracts are from the Examiner:

"LOCK-STEP" ARTICLE THAT AROUSED EDUCATORS

HERBERT BASHFORD IN THE "LITERARY WEST."

Our system of education in the common school is not conducive to creative work and original research. The pupil must not pipe out of tune. It is forbidden him to enter upon bypaths for personal investigation. He must walk with others and keep lock-step whether it be agreeable or not. The public school at best is a huge machine. It grinds its grist and adds each year to its already bewildering complications. Instead of growing more simplified in all ways it grows more complex and mystifying. Without regard to the talent God may have bestowed upon the pupil, that particular gift receives no special cultivation. The average teacher manifests little interest in the training of the child for the life work nature may have intended him to perform, but simply carries out the fixed program, the needs of the pupil being necessarily ignored because of the graded system. As an instance, in elementary composition the pupils' minds are so confused with the mechanism of formal rules that the spirit of spontaneity utterly escapes them. If they possess an idea original with themselves, it flees ere the

details of grammar permit it to assume expression on paper. While the great majority of essays written by high school graduates are grammatically correct, they utterly lack individuality. The reason for this is at once apparent when we consider that the pupils have been trained not as individuals but as a whole. They have moved in rank, step by step. Their personal preference in matters of study has not been consulted. They have turned square corners until the marked individuality of each is gone. They have been literally ground out of a machine. The cultivation of gifts peculiar to each has been left to private tutors. The essays of high school graduates and even those of the students doing collegiate work seldom possess a marketable value. Rather than receive instruction in the art of prose expression that would enable them to describe the beauty of a pine tree in a style quite their own, they are required to translate so many lines of Virgil, thus becoming saturated with the classics until it is wellnigh impossible for them to express their thoughts in other than the obsolete phraseology of the mumified Past.

The teachers are not to blame. The bitter censure they so frequently receive from the public is sweetened by a few words of appreciation for the good they try to accomplish. It devolves upon them to carry out the system. They strive to teach children to be alike rather than unlike as the Creator intended. The task assigned the teachers must be a thankless one. Few of them who have been a part of the machine any number of years are the possessors of strong nerves. They simply wear their lives out in crushing individuality, in attempting to make the children conform to set regulations regarding examinations, course of study, etc., without taking into consideration the natural aptitude of the victims. That both pupils and teachers do not become nervous wrecks is a wonder when we pause to think that fifty boys and girls are placed in one grade, no two of whom possess the same individual traits or the same degree of mentality, and are forced to pursue the same course of study in the same way, at the same time, in perfect uniformity regardless of their respective talents, their environment, or heredity. Could anything be more irrational? Could the mind of man conceive anything more absurd and call it a system of education? While the presidents of our great universities are beginning to proclaim the need of individual training, those responsible for that cultivator of mediocrity known as the graded city school have yet failed to see the ridiculous side of the machine system.

INDIVIDUALITY SHOULD NOT BE CRUSHED OUT

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER

The purpose of education, so far as I am able to see, is to give personality its maximum of effectiveness for good. It cannot be any part of its work to crush out individuality, for that would mean the crippling or annulment of effectiveness. It cannot be its duty to make all men alike, for that looks toward stagnation in society and history. Men do not reach full effective. ness on the one hand unless they are natural; on the other hand, unless they work thru the established social mechanism and in essential harmony with it: in essentials liberty, in nonessentials conformity. Man is a free soul, but is also a social being. His head is in the free air, but his feet must keep on solid ground. Education has to take account of this dualism.

I believe in the public schools. I do not like to see wealthy people sending their children to private schools. It is bad for the commonwealth and bad for the children. A boy who is to take his full part as an American citizen had better be brought up in the rank and file of youngsters "just as they come" in unassorted lots. He will have to learn about the unassorted lots some time, if he is to play a man's full part, and he had better learn about them in a natural way. The associations of the public schools constitute for the boy a process of training in becoming a social being. All of this belongs not to a process of crushing out individuality, but to a process of bringing it into accord.

A bright boy doubtless loses time in waiting for twenty dull ones to be forced thru the reading lesson. I would not on this account take him out of school and put him under a private tutor, The world is not yearning for more prigs. Of prigs and prodigies it has enough -all it can now use. It always wants, however, more people who can take the other fellow's point of view. The yearning and the demand in this line are apparently without limit. This, then, is what I have to say to the criticisms of the public schools in the paper before me:

1. Study and training in classes, and classes of considerable size, is infinitely better for a boy than private tutoring. I have no doubt it is better for a girl also.

2. The public schools are making great advances in the direction of regard for the indi

vidual pupil. They will steadily advance. What has been already done is more marvelous than what has been left undone and more worthy of an article.

3. While pupils should be trained in groups, they should be known as individuals. A teacher who really teaches that is, uplifts- must deal with individual human souls. No public school should place more than twenty-five pupils under the care of one teacher.

WHY MACHINE SCHOOLING IS SO INADEQUATE

DAVID STARR JORDAN

The school system of a large city in the hands of a relatively small number of relatively small men is forced to subordinate effectiveness to order and to economy.

The problem is to teach an enormous number of children with a teaching force too small for the work, and at salaries that will not demand personal force, originality, or high training. The individuality of the teacher is obliterated by the machine and that of the child is lost sight of altogether. The training given may be fair to mediocre, but the personal stimulus, the impetus to the growth of originality is very slight. Our schools are doing a great deal more than most of us realize. It is easy to criticise and still easier to criticise unjustly. But our city schools are poorly supported, poorly officered, poorly supplied with teachers, and they are run on half the money necessary if they are to do their best work. So long as this is true, they will turn out fairly intelligent students, who have yet to discover themselves and on whose work the familiar high school brand will be stamped.

Some things that the schools of our great cities- let us say of San Francisco -need may be summed up in a few words:

First Broad-minded supervision. At the head should be a man chosen out of our millions for his wisdom, capacity, and clearness of vision in school matters. He should be free to work out plans adequate for the needs of our children, to furnish schoolhouses, appliances, and competent men and women as teachers. He should have the means to pay for the best and should not be required to take as teachers the dependents of politicians, the widows of the feeble-minded, and the girls who haven't anything else to do but teach. He should be free to appoint or to remove and to choose his teachers wherever good teachers may be found. Such a man would give like freedom to his teachers. He would give play for their individual talents and would not work them beyond the limit of endurance, for good teaching is not done under nervous strain. With means to pay for good work, he would restore to the lower schools their lost balance of men teachers. Men have their place in all stages of education, and the present disparity in favor of women is due to the poverty and indifference of the public who pays the bills. With everything arranged in machine fashion, and the political machine as the court of final appeal, the wonder is that our city schools should be as good as they are. For this fact we have to thank a relatively small body of devoted women and men who have taken the vow of poverty and who have made themselves good teachers regardless of politics and systems. We can count on these, even in a city where the superintendent is chosen by the political caucus and where the life tenure guards all teachers, competent and incompetent alike, from any consequences of their own success or failure.

Individualism is just as important in the lower schools as in the university. The traits which are individual are the child's most precious possession. Without education he cannot develop them at all; with a machine-made education he cannot bring out their best possibilities. In the schools of today the history of the future is written, and there is no reform so important as the strengthening and individualizing of the teachers in the schools. The strengthening of the school system is quite another thing. Most systems of all sorts are quite strong enough already.

HE HEARTILY AGREES WITH THE CRITICISM

FREDERIC BURK

I agree most heartily with the criticism as a general statement of fact applicable to the majority of schools, particularly to those of large cities where the necessity of some system has been seized as a ready excuse for the complete reduction of the teaching force to a mechanical automaton. San Francisco has suffered from this condition probably as much as any city in the United States, tho in the past three years some efforts have been made looking toward Editor Bashford's ideals. The criticism, however, is not new, but is one which educational