tion in the sciences. Many of the teach- education quantitatively, if we may so speak, for the production of permanent effects, we must recognize the law of mental limitations that is educible from cerebral physiology. In an essay treating of the philosophy of mental discipline we said: "It no longer admits of denial or cavil that the Author of our being has seen fit to connect mind and intelligence with a nervous mechanism; in studying mental phenomena, therefore, in connection with this mechanism, we are studying them in the therefore in the only true relation. Nothrelation which God has established, and ing is more certain than that, in future, mind is to be considered in connection with the organism by which it is conditioned. When it is said that the brain is the organ of the mind, it is meant that in thinking, remembering, reasoning, the brain acts. The basis of educability, and hence of mental discipline, is to be sought in the properties of that nervous substance by which mind is manifested. When it is perceived that what we have to deal with in mental acquirement is organic processes which have a definite time-rate of activity, so that, however vigor keeping at a thing, acquisition is not increased in the same degree; when we see that new attainments are easiest and most rapid during early life-the time of most vigorous growth of the body generally; that thinking exhausts the brain as really as working exhausts the muscles, while rest and nutrition are as much needed in one case as the other; when we see that rapidity of attainment and tenacity of memory involve the question of cerebral adhesions, and note how widely constitutions differ in these capabilities, how they depend upon We took this ground decisively twenty years ago. When applied to by Mr. Greeley to write some articles for the Tribune on "Scientific Educa-ously the cerebral currents are sustained by tion," we devoted them to a statement of the ground that science requires all intelligent teachers to take in the pursuit of their profession. We illustrated and enforced the position that, to develop the mind and form the character, the starting-point of the teacher must be a knowledge of the brain and of nervous physiology, and that all teaching without this knowledge must be empirical, is certain to be faulty, and liable to be injurious. The discussion was premature. We sowed upon unprepared ground. It was objected that all beyond the bare introduction of more chemistry and physics in the schools was impracticable and fanciful; while to talk of "brain" instead of "mind" was dreaded as dangerous, and condemned as leading "straight down to materialism." In a work published a dozen years ago, "On the Culture demanded by Modern Life," this view was reaffirmed and more fully illustrated. It was insisted that to gain definite ideas of the laws of mind so as to work the forces of blood, stock, and health, and vary with numberless conditions-we become aware how inexorably the problem of mental attainment is hedged round with limitations, and the vague notion that there are no bounds to acquisition except imperfect application disappears forever." The general view (here illustrated in a special application) has been maintained in THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY from the outset. We have published papers from the ablest scientific men of different countries, illustrating the control of physiological and psychological principles over the objects and methods of education. These able discussions, we are happy to say, have been increasingly appreciated; and it is gratifying to note that the view we have steadily urged for these many years begins to be widely accepted as the basis of a new departure in the progress of scientific education. A conspicuous illustration of this has recently been afforded by the course of the most influential journal in England. There has been a systematic movement in that country to get a larger share of scientific study in the lower schools; and, under the vigorous leadership of Sir John Lubbock, in the House of Commons, efforts have been made to modify school legislation so as to enforce this result. A majority has not yet been gained, but the position is giving way, and the end sought will undoubtedly soon be attained. Upon the last and recent defeat of Sir John Lubbock's measure, the London Times came out with a leading editorial on the right side, and which is chiefly remarkable for the advanced and unqualified position which it takes. We reprint this article of the Times in the present number of the MONTHLY, together with the comments of the editor of Nature upon it. How completely the writer sustains the views that we have long labored to inculcate, is well shown in the following instructive passage: op Educa that a brain cannot arrive at healthy maturity excepting by the assistance of a sufficient supply of healthy blood; that is to say, of known that the power of a brain will ultigood food and pure air. It also became mately depend very much upon the way in which it is habitually exercised, and that the practice of schools in this respect left a great deal to be desired. A large amount mally for no other reason than because it is of costly and pretentious teaching fails disnot directed by any knowledge of the mode of action of the organ to which the teacher endeavors to appeal; and mental growth, in many instances, occurs in spite of teaching rather than on account of it. tion, which might once have been defined the introduction of mechanically compressed as an endeavor to expand the intellect by facts, should now be defined as an endeavor favorably to influence a vital process; and, when so regarded, its direction should manifestly fall somewhat into the hands of those been most completely studied. by whom the nature of vital processes has In other words, it becomes neither more nor less than a branch of applied physiology; and physiologists tell us with regard to it that the common processes of teaching are open to the grave objection that they constantly appeal to the lower centres of nervous funcreaction upon sensations, rather than to tion, which govern the memory of and the those of higher ones which are the organs of ratiocination and of volition. Hence a great deal which passes for education is really a degradation of the human brain to applies especially to book-work, in which efforts below its natural capacities. This the memory of sounds in given sequences is often the sole demand of the teacher, and in which the pupil, instead of knowing the meaning of the sounds, often does not know what 'meaning' means. As soon as the ing remains, and we are then confronted by sequence of the sounds is forgotten, notha question which was once proposed in an inspectorial report: To what purpose in after-life is a boy taught, if the intervention of a school vacation is to be a sufficient excuse for entirely forgetting his instruction?"" "As soon as physiologists had discovered that all the faculties of the intellect, however originating or upon whatever exercised, were functions of a material organism or brain, absolutely dependent upon its integrity for their manifestation, and upon its growth and development for their improvement, it became apparent that the true office of the teacher of the future would be to seek to learn the conditions by which the growth and the operations of the brain were controlled in order that he might be able to modify these conditions in a favorable manner. The abstraction of the 'mind' was so far set aside as to make it certain that this mind could only act through a nervous structure, and that the structure was subject to various influences for good or evil. It became known THE CLASSICS IN GERMANY. THOSE of our readers who have perused the previous portions of Prof. Du Bois-Reymond's article on "Civilization and Science" will hardly need that we should call their attention to Latin and Greek, he says, "For the most part these young people wrote in ungrammatical and inelegant German.” They "did not even suspect that any one could care about purity of language and pronunciation, force of expression, brevity, or pointedness of style." The study of classical authors is again arraigned with us as obstructing the proper study of the great English classics; and Prof. Du Bois-Reymond remarks, "This neglect of the mothertongue in the youth of the present day is accompanied by a lack of acquaintance with the German classics that is oftentimes astounding." It is again said that the classical students of English and American colleges very rarely acquire any permanent interest in these studies, so as to keep them up as a part of the mental occupation in after-life. The same complaint is made in Germany. The professor says: the concluding part herewith published., drilled so long, though ineffectually, in After a survey of the progress of the human mind as illustrated in the great scientific movement of modern times, he comes to the practical question of German education, considered in relation to those extreme utilitarian tendencies of the age against which he protests. How is the Americanization of European culture to be withstood in Germany?—that is his question. The reply has been, through the liberalizing influence of classical studies. The professor acknowledges himself a devotee to these studies, and has a high opinion of their educational value; but he admits that, although prosecuted with great vigor, they have failed to produce the desired effect. "What other country can boast of imparting so thorough and so learned a classical education, and that to so large a proportion of its youth, even of the less wealthy classes?" But all this is a humiliating failure. They neither acquired a critical familiarity with Latin and Greek vocabularies, nor did they arrive at any such conception of the thought of the ancients as to see in what way we are their intellectual descendants. "Their indifference toward broad ideas and historic sequence makes it difficult for me to believe that they are permeated with the spirit of antiquity, or that they had received a sound historical training." This, it will be remembered, is the complaint everywhere-in the English universities and the American colleges: not one in ten of those who consume years in the study of classics gets any intelligent acquaint-man boy?" ance with the subject. It is, moreover, an old and cogent objection to the usual study of Latin and Greek, both in England and in this country, that, so far from favoring a critical knowledge of English, it hinders and defeats the mastery of the mother-tongue. Prof. Du Bois-Reymond alleges that the same effect is produced in Germany. Of the graduates of the gymnasia who had "There are but few students, indeed, who in later years ever open an ancient author. So far from having any warm love for the classics, most persons regard them with indifference; not a few with aversion. They are remembered only as the instruments by means of which they were made familiar with the rules of grammar, just as sal history is that of learning by rote insigthe only conception they retain of univernificant dates. Was it for this that these youths sat for thirty hours weekly on a school-bench till their eighteenth or twentieth year? Was it for this that they devoted most of their time to studying Greek, Latin, and history? Is this the result for the attainment of which the gymnasium remorselessly englooms the life of the Ger Prof. Du Bois-Reymond therefore acknowledges a serious modification of opinion in regard to the employment of classical studies in the German schools. The gymnasia, or higher schools, have failed with their classics, and the industrial schools in which these studies are but little taught are entitled to increasing consideration. Classical studies, he urges, should be retrenched in the gymnasia, and greater attention given to mathematics and the physical sciences. This conflict, therefore, belongs to no nation, but is as broad as the interests of science and the course of civilization itself. was arrested by death. It is to be hoped that his manuscript notes may have been sufficiently full to make it practicable and desirable for his friends to print them in a collected form. PROF. WILLIAM MONROE DAVIS, of Cleveland, Ohio, died on the 21st of July, at the age of seventy years. He was born in New Hampshire, and his ancestry on the father's side went back to the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, while on the mother's side he was closely related to the family of President Monroe. He went to Cincinnati in his boyhood, and grew up there with but a limited education. It was only when married and having children to be trained that he first began the study of science; but such was his native genius that he soon mastered a position as an original thinker and investigator in astronomy. The distinction he had won could not be better shown than by the fact that, when Prof. Mitchell abandoned science and took to the vocation of war, Mr. Davis was called to succeed him as director in the Cincinnati Observatory, a position which he filled with satisfaction and credit. His health failing five years ago, he came to Cleveland to reside with his son-in-law, Mr. A. J. Rickoff, the eminent educationist of Ohio. He constructed a very valuable telescope, the lenses of which were ground by his own hands. He published in the July number of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY a paper containing an able and profound discussion of the nebular hypothesis and the phenomena of planetary rings and satellites, the immediate occasion of the article being the recent discovery and apparently anomalous motions of the moons of Mars. Prof. Davis had worked out his own views on these recondite questions, and expected to develop them in a series of essays for the MONTHLY, when his work VOL. XIII.-40 LITERARY NOTICES. LESSONS IN COOKERY: HAND-BOOK OF THE NATIONAL TRAINING-SCHOOL FOR COOKERY (South Kensington, London). To which is added THE PRINCIPLES OF DIET IN HEALTH AND DISEASE, by THOMAS K. CHAMBERS, M. D. Edited by ELIZA A. YOUMANS. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 382. Price, $1.50. Two things closely connected are much and justly complained of in this countrythe everlasting multiplication of new cookbooks and the general badness of cookery. Publications of every form and variety abound upon this subject, with no corresponding improvement in the art by which food is prepared. It would be going too far to ascribe the low state of our culinary practice to the qualities of the literature that deals with it, for in many cases cookbooks have no influence at all upon kitchen operations; but it is equally certain that the current manuals do much to perpetuate the bad methods to which they are conformed. The reason of their failure to effect much improvement is obvious enough, for our popular manuals of cookery make no provision for learning the business in the way all other arts have to be learned if they are to be successfully prosecuted. They proceed upon the false principle that a practical vocation, depending upon a knowledge of the properties of numerous substances, involving constant manipulation and the production of delicate and complicated effects, can be learned by simply reading about it. This mischievous error, various quarters, and it is seen that cookhowever, is beginning to be recognized in ery, like all other subjects, must be studied in a rational way, in accordance with the nature of the subject. England has the honor of taking the lead in a vigorous movement to make the art of practical cookery a branch of common education. The effort has been successful in so eminent a degree that it promises to be perma nent and to become of immense advantage to the community. But no important step of advancement can be taken in this direction without a wide diffusion of its advantages; whatever has been gained by English experience is ours as well as theirs. One of the fruits of the establishment of the London Training-School is that we have at last got a hand-book of cookery upon the right method, and which, if used as it can be everywhere, will be certain to elevate this hitherto neglected branch of domestic economy. The claims of this work upon American households are so important, and so clearly presented by the editor in her preface to the American edition, that we cannot better serve the interested readers of the MONTHLY than by quoting the main portions of the statement: "The present work on cookery appeared in England under the title of 'The Official Hand-Book of the National Training-School for Cookery,' and it contains the lessons on the preparation of food which were practised in that institution. It has been reprinted in this country with some slight revision, for the use of American families, because of its superior merits as a cookbook to be consulted in the ordinary way, and also because it is the plainest, simplest, and most perfect guide to self-education in the kitchen that has yet appeared. In this respect it represents a very marked advance in an important domestic art hitherto much neglected. "A glance at its contents will show the ground it covers, and how fully it meets the general wants. The dishes for which it provides have been selected with an unusual degree of care and judgment. They have been chosen to meet the needs of well-to-do families, and also those of more moderate means, who must observe a strict economy. Provision is made for an ample and varied diet, and for meals of a simple and frugal character. Receipts are given for an excellent variety of soups, for cooking many kinds of fish in different ways, for the preparation of meats, poultry, game, and vegetables, and for a choice selection of entrées, soufflés, puddings, jellies, and creams. Besides the courses of a well-ordered dinner, there are directions for making rolls, biscuits, bread, and numerous dishes for break fast and tea, together with a most valuable set of directions how to prepare food for the sick. The aim has been to meet the wants of the great mass of people who are not rich enough to abandon their kitchen to the management of professional cooks, and who must keep a careful eye to expense. But, while the costly refinements of artistic and decorative cookery are avoided, there has been a constant reference to the simple requirements of good taste in the preparation of food for the table. "But the especial merit of this volume, and the character by which it stands alone among cook-books, is the superior method it offers of teaching the art of practical cookery. It is at this vital point that all our current cook-books break down; they make no provision for getting a knowledge of this subject in any systematic way. So much in them is vague, so much taken for granted, and so much is loose, careless, and misleading, in their receipts, that they are good for nothing to teach beginners, good for nothing as guides to successful practice, and only of use to those who already know enough to supply their deficiencies and protect themselves against their errors. In fact, the hand-book required to teach cookery effectually cannot be made by any single person in the usual manner, but it must be itself a product of such teaching. "The present volume originated in this way, and embodies a tried and successful method of making good practical cooks. The lessons given in the following pages came from a training-kitchen for pupils of all grades, and the directions of its receipts are so minute, explicit, distinct, and complete, that they may be followed with ease by every person of common-sense who has the slightest desire to learn. They are the results of long and careful practice in teaching beginners how to cook, and have grown out of exercises often repeated with a view of making them as perfect as possible. It is commonly regarded as a good thing in a cook-book that its compiler has tested some of its receipts, and points out the troubles and failures likely to occur in early trials. But the completeness of the instructions in this work was attained through the stupidities, blunders, mistakes, questionings, and |