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the double purpose of preparing a programme and framing a constitution. Doubtless, the first meeting of the new association will be held in Toronto in 1892, and if this be the case the members may reckon on a most enthusiastic welcome.

SYSTEMATIC MORAL EDUCATION.

The world of thought fully recognizes the composite structure of mind—and in a general way the necessity of education for the development of faculty into harmonious and efficient action. We say in a general way this necessity of education is recognized, for in practice the methods employed by teachers and parents have but a partial application. It is the intellect that receives the chief attention. The text-books, the discussions among those learned in psychology, the routine of the school room, the profounder interest of the home guardian relate to the development of that division of human faculties that concern sense perception, reasoning on the nature and use of the objects of sense, and the application of physical instrumentalities to the attainment of certain material results.

Children have one leading object set before them at home and at school, viz., an independent position, the meaning of which is the possession of so much money or property that will place them above the necessity of labor and command the respect of society. With this object clearly in view, habits are inculcated that exercise constantly those faculties that consider the conventional uses of things, that estimate the material values of the products of nature and industry, and descriminate the results of effort on the side of their essential quality and application. So the eyes and ears, the hands and feet are directed and trained by daily practice in lines contributory to what is regarded as profitable and advantageous to self. It is not difficult to see that if the individual be naturally endowed with a disposition to self-indulgence, and has but a moderate regard for the interests of others, the cultivation of the faculties indicated in the way just described would strengthen his acquisitiveness and render him more and more disposed to self-seeking. One of the best outcomes of educational thought is the Kindergarten. Starting with the axiom that when the child is old enough to observe, i.e., to use his physical senses, he is old enough to receive training, a carefully formulated system is applied to the evolution of the practical faculties in a manner that shall be thorough, and furnish the young life with a solid basis for the future. The training of the Kindergarten, how

ever, relates to the use of the eyes and ears and hands mainly. It aims to provide employments of a simple nature that shall please children-while it trains their budding faculties in a gradual way, to discriminate closely the nature of common objects, to be exact in regard to form, color, proportion, number, and other qualities that enter into the constitution of things with which our daily life is associated. This work of the Kindergarten is of high importance as preliminary to the entrance upon the more serious studies of the school, but it chiefly concerns the organic centres that relate to the intellect. There is some moral exercise, to be sure, associated with the child-garden, but it is incidental to the association of the little ones, and does not enter definitely into the formularies of the instruction.

Human character is colored by the strength of its motives, and the coloration seems more conspicuous according to the line of action pursued by the individual. Motives arise from suggestion influencing one's more active feelings or instincts. Illregulated feeling imparts an unworthy or spasmodic character to motives, and the practical faculties that respond to these motives having received thorough systematic training, may do their part skilfully, but at the same time with the achievement of material success the man may sink in moral turpitude and mendacity.

Here and there the example occurs of the lawyer, the bank officer, the business man, pre-eminent for shrewdness and tact in the management of the affairs in his charge, whose lapse from moral integrity becomes known to the world through some gross fraud. With every intellectual faculty trained to a high degree of activity, giving him power to estimate with minute exactness the probable outcome of this or that enterprise, he was sadly wanting in the one element most essential to self-control, moral discrimination. This not because he was born without the faculties that constitute the moral sense, but because they were not trained to perform their normal part in the operations of his mind.

It seems to be commonly expected that the moral elements will take care of themselves, and at the proper time, whatever that may be, will come to the front and exercise their rectifying influence. The disciples of heredity are heard declaring that this one is vicious or criminal because he has not enough of the moral elements in his mental economy, and that another is upright and noble because he is so fortunate as to have inherited a large share of these desirable elements. It would seem, according to the opinion of some, that accident had much to do

with the proportion of the nobler sentiments that men exhibit in character. But we do not accept these views of the matter, and would point to the conspicuous inconsistency of the heredity doctrinaires in their treatment of the intellectual faculties.

Would they forbear sending a child to school, because of apparent deficiency in some of them, unless he were a pronounced idiot? Certainly not. For the training of the school may brighten up an intellect that seemed very dull.

Why make so illogical a descrimination between components that exist side by side in the same mind, and whose expression is dependent upon similar physiological conditions?

Let us exemplify the different treatment that these two factors of mental capacity receive at the hands of society.

As soon as the child is able to use his eyes and ears efficiently, his instruction about things is begun. He is told the names of the objects surrounding him : their uses are explained, and gradually his memory is stored with information that bears chiefly on that which concerns self maintenance, so that his elders will be relieved as much as possible of the care incident to watching his movements. He is taught to read and write; then comes the course in arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, etc., a gradual progress being made with the development of intellectual capacity. It is "line upon line and precept upon precept that constitutes the order of his instruction. He is required to commit to memory rules and definitions, and to repeat them over and over again until they become so firmly fixed in his mental substance that their operation is unconscious, or a secondary intuition.

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Thus as he reads he understands without effort the significance of words and phrases, and in performing an example in arithmetic he adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides off-hand without consciously recognizing the steps of the process which were so laboriously and perhaps tediously acquired. Is he studying geography, the teacher requires him to note thoroughly the charasteristics of form, climate, soil, products and population of a country; its boundaries and relation to other countries near and far; latitude and longitude, etc., and he is not considered well up in the topic until he can answer promptly any questions that are asked him.

So with his study of other subjects that are deemed essential to his usefulness in the career that will open before him, in the near future, as a business or professional man. The faculties of language, comparison, order, number, locality, constructiveness, time, taste, caution, industry, etc., etc., are stimulated and

drilled day after day for years, and when the youth emerges a "graduate" from the school, he is supposed to have education enough for the purpose of life. And he has on one side of his organization. The attentive reader doubtless anticipates what we would say now, in attempting to picture what is usually the case with the moral development of a child and youth, and it is unnecessary to present an elaborate study of this-the neglected side of education. The same law of growth, the same responsiveness to training, subsist in regard to the moral faculties as to the intellectual; but where is the teacher, where the treatise that has a methodical order for their culture?

Hundreds of volumes issue from the press yearly with carefully arranged formularies for the exercise and training of the mathematical, the constructive, the lingual, the reasoning faculties, but where are the books for the parents and teachers' guidance for the orderly exercise and development of the faculties, of benevolence, sympathy, reverence, conscientiousness, steadfastness, hope, etc. Surely, these are as important to the success and happiness of men and women as their intellectual associates! Indeed, it will not be disputed that the miseries of society are due mainly to their inactivity or perversion.

What a field the psychologist has to amend the educational methods of the day. Let him be stirring about it. The need of moral culture is urgent. We have enough of the intellectual, too much in fact, and its uncompensated effects are visible in the vice, wickedness and moral confusion that pervade the life of this modern era of so-called civilization.-Phrenological Journal.

Editorial Notes and Comments.

The issue of the RECORD for this month will fall into the hands of its readers just as they are returning from the midsummer holidays, and again it is our privilege to wish the teachers of the province of Quebec every success in their work during the scholastic year which is just opening. Many of them have been in attendance at the provincial institutes or at the great convention of Toronto, and no doubt have had their minds refreshed with the fraternal sympathy extended to them at these gatherings; and as they turn their hands to the plough for another period, it is our earnest hope that they have come to recognize more and more the importance of their work. The earnest teacher makes the good school, and the responsibility of success or non-success can hardly be placed elsewhere than on

him or her who has the guidance in such large measure of the destiny of the school for the time being. There are drawbacks to success in all the callings of life, and perhaps more of them are to be met with in the teacher's experience than in any other. Yet the world is at the present moment fully alive to the importance of elementary school work, and the sympathies of the masses are in favor of the teacher who knows what his or her work is, and dares to do it in spite of all opposition. In our own province there are to be seen evidences of a desire to improve, if the means were only provided for making our elementary schools what they ought to be. We have pointed out again and again what these necessities are, and the prospect is that, under the régime of the present government, steps will be taken at an early date to provide for these necessities in such a spirit of liberality as will raise our elementary schools above reproach. In the meantime we again bid our readers "Godspeed" in their desire to make a good year of it.

-In referring to the changes which our educational theorists are every now and again urging upon the community, we have never swerved from advocating the unification of the school course under the immediate supervision of the regularlyappointed teachers. The specialty is only apparently successful as long as it continues to be a novelty, and such momentary success is hardly ever to be considered a gain in presence of the loss of interest in the regular studies its presence begets. And we are not alone in this advocacy by any means. For example, the public interest in the matter of physical training in the schools of Britain has been further excited by the action of the Earl of Meath, who lately introduced a bill in the House of Lords which proposed to place physical exercises in the category of those subjects which must be taught as a condition of obtaining the highest government grant. In other words, the Earl of Meath advocates the placing of physical exercises in the school curriculum alongside of the mental exercises in grammar, geography, arithmetic, etc., and when he is asked, "who are the instructors to be?" he answers readily enough, "that it is of great importance, more than is at first apparent, that the gymnastic instructor and teacher should be one and the same person; and for holding this opinion he adduces no less than five distinct reasons. These reasons, it must be admitted, have much weight. They are that this would be the most economical arrangement; that it would conduce to the physical development of the teachers themselves; that discipline could be more easily maintained by the regular teacher than by an outsider; that their proficiency in

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