and only one who has can be of service to her pupils in this direction - will find no other of the school subjects so helpful as history to inculcate it. The lessons for the intellect are to be found here: the connection between the national well-being and the subordination of the material welfare of the individual to the public good. The persuasive appeal to the emotions may be made here — the presentation of the characters of those who owe their place in history to their readiness to forego the gratification of their individual desires in the interest of the public good.

These, then, are the ways in which the study of history contributes to the purposes of education: it promotes the study of human nature, cultivates sympathy and charity, deepens the sense of the reality of moral laws, and prepares for the duties of citizenship by imparting the knowledge, developing the kind of reasoning power, and fostering the ideals without which good citizenship is impossible.

Children May Study History with Profit. It may be urged that such benefits presuppose that the student brings to the consideration of history the maturity of the high school or the college. To this objection two replies may be made. In the first place, the six-year-old just entering school has already been a student of human nature for several years. Without help from any one he has discovered the existence of other people and made some progress in the study of individuals. The intelligent teacher of history will only build on the foundation the child has already laid. She will help him continue his study of human nature by telling him about people whom he has not seen; she will broaden his sympathies by making him acquainted with the people of other lands and times.

Moreover, if this were not true, the facts would still oblige us to maintain that if history should be studied at all, it is because of the benefits we have enumerated. If the boy in the elementary school cannot obtain these benefits, he cannot obtain any benefit whatever.

We have got in the habit of talking about elementary, high-school, and college education, as though the things were as different as their names, and this has given currency to the notion that the educational value of a subject depends on the grade of the school in which it is taught. We need to remember that in every stage of education it is a growing mind with which we have to do, and that the educational value of our efforts consists in the extent to which we have caused that mind to exercise its capacities to know, feel, and will. Now an elementary pupil either can or cannot be made to understand some of the simpler facts of biography and history; if he can, he may be taught some of the simpler facts of human nature. He either can or cannot understand some of the simpler explanations of history; if he can, he is capable of being trained in the kind of reasoning that the correct explanation of current political conditions requires. He either can or cannot be made to see the beauty of the lives of some of the noble men and women of the world; if he can, it is possible that his own ideals may be changed through his study of history.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What is meant by educational value?

2. What is the comparison between medicine and studies intended to show?

3. In what way does history increase one's knowledge of himself and his fellows?

4. What does Froude mean by the outward fact?

5. How does history tend to develop sympathy and charity? 6. In what way does it help us to realize that nations, like individuals, must obey moral laws?

7. What are the qualifications of a good citizen?

8. Illustrate the sort of knowledge needed for citizenship.

9. What kind of reasoning power must a good citizen possess, and how can he acquire it?

10. What sort of ideal must a good citizen have?

II. What is the story of the campaign of 1896 intended to show?

12. What theory as to the relation of the individual to society prevailed up to the time of the Sophists?

13. What was their theory?

14. What is its American counterpart?

15. Show that children may study history with profit.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.

1. Why is it so hard for most people to believe that the only realities are material?

2. How may history help to show that there are other realities? 3. Show that there is no such thing as a general cultivation of observation, memory, imagination, or reasoning.

4. Who were the Sophists?

5. What bearing do our conclusions as to plastic imitation have on the teaching of high civic ideals?

6. What should be the characteristics of the teacher who imparts such ideals, and why are they essential?

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF SPELLING, LANGUAGE LESSONS, AND GRAMMAR.

Spelling Has Little Educational Value. As to the edu cational value of spelling it is sufficient to say that it has little. The good speller has no clearer insight into the laws of nature or of mind than the poor speller, responds no more readily to any phase of beauty or call of duty. The sole distinction between them consists in the difference of a certain kind of memory, the cultivation of which has little value for any other purpose.

Sir Joshua Fitch

The Uses of Forgotten Knowledge. has an interesting paragraph on the uses of forgotten knowledge. "It would not be right to conclude," he says, "that all knowledge which is forgotten has failed to serve a useful purpose. It may be forgotten in the form in which it has been received, but it may reappear in another.

. . It is true that what is consciously got up for some temporary purpose drops out of the ground and leaves no trace. Like Jonah's gourd, it comes up in a night and perishes in a night. It is not of this I speak. But all knowledge once honestly acquired and made a subject of thought germinates, even though in time it becomes unrecognizable, and seems to disappear altogether. It has fulfilled its purpose, has deepened a conviction, has formed the legitimate ground for some conclusion on which in

turn something else has been built; and it gives to the learner a sense of freedom and of elbow-room when in after-life he is dealing with it and cognate subjects, such as he could not possibly experience if the subject were wholly new to him. Rules serve their purpose if they form our habits of speech or of action, even though these habits are not consciously obedient to the rules, and although the rules themselves could not be restated in an explicit form. A demonstration in mathematics has done its work if, for the time, it gave an insight into the true method of reasoning, even though in later life we utterly fail to remember the theorem or the proof. So the exact character of a set of experimental illustrations in physics may be entirely forgotten; yet if the truth they illustrated was by their help fastened on the mind, and has subsequently been seen in wider and more varied application, we have no right to say that the original effort has been wasted. . . Here, then, is one of the tests of our schoollessons. Grant that as school-lessons they will be forgotten. Let us reconcile ourselves to this as inevitable, and ask in relation to everything which we teach Is it germinating and fruit-bearing or not? When the husk and shell shall have decayed, will there be anything left? If so, what? Will this bit of knowledge drop wholly out of the memory and leave no trace ? " 1

An application of this test will make it evident that spelling as such has no educational value. When the spell

ing of a word drops out of the memory, it leaves no trace behind. No conviction has been deepened on account of it, no sense of freedom has resulted from it. By a dead heave of mechanical memory the combination of letters

1 Fitch, Lectures on Teaching, p. 145.