COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

ABSTRACT OF MR. G. JAGO'S PAPER.

(Read March 12th, 1874.)

THE lecturer said that neither books nor conference would enable the amateur, however learned and zealous he might be, to compete with the man whose every-day life and practice was devoted to the subject of the education of the million-the moral and intellectual training of the poor man's child. It was the schoolmaster's province to associate and sympathise with the working classes. The schoolmaster was not a mere automaton, carrying out a code of regulations and routine by dint of some universal law which he had obtained by college training or special licence. Whatever might be his acquirements and talent, he could not impart that knowledge to his pupils without appropriate auxiliaries, and the chief of these would be order and discipline. Among the many difficulties with which the teacher had to contend, perhaps there were none more worrying than careless absenteeism and truancy from school. It was the besetting sin of children, especially those of the lowest class. Kind feeling would induce the teacher to enlist the sympathies of the parents by an evening interview when the family circle was complete. Children were frequently kept at home to engage in household work. These poor people could not afford to employ servants in their little household affairs, and all the work that had to be done must be shared between the members

of the family. A half-time school was wanting for such cases, which would not only remove the difficulty existing in this particular instance, but might be applied with equal effect to many other cases in the same category. Another class of absentees, more difficult to deal with, were the children of soldiers and sailors, the fathers of whom were usually absent from their homes some three years at a time, when the children were confided to the care and training of the mother, and that mother too frequently employed during the day in charwork. There was, however, a

check on this delinquency. The Admiralty gave a gratuity for all such children as had attended school the proper number of times in the year, and the effect of that had been beneficial to parent and child. Then there were the street Arabs. The Vagrant Act empowered the magistrates to apprehend and commit to prison all children found in the streets, or elsewhere, who could not give a satisfactory account of obtaining their livelihood by honest means, and when such children were convicted of vagrancy, to send them to schools of detention, where the State paid for them until they were provided with some means of support. Here, then, was the first step towards direct compulsion which had begun at the extreme end of the scale. What should prevent a national committee of education from doing the work that had been done in every large town by the British schools, with unity of purpose, on a more extensive scale, provided the committee were composed of men imbued with a spirit of philanthropy and determined to sacrifice selfish motives for the purpose of improving the condition of their poorer brethren? Much had been done, and much remained still to be done, before the children would be found in their proper place the school. Plymouth contained about 70,000 inhabitants, of whom 11,666 should be at school, but according to the account rendered by Captain Pope only 7,920 were on the school registers, and deducting for average attendance only 7,000 were really at school. That compulsory measures were necessary to accomplish the object in view was now the opinion of almost all, the only point at issue being the means to be employed. The power of the School Board Executive was very limited. What they wanted to enforce attendance at school was a direct National law, making the magistrate, through the School Board, the executive power. There should exist a law compelling the parent to give reasonable notice of his intention to withdraw his child from school, and on leaving he should be furnished with a printed discharge, signed by the teacher, without which a boy would not be allowed to enter another school. Then came a very important part of the subject, the employment of children of immature or under age. He would suggest that no employer should be allowed to engage any child without such a warrant, as referred to above, being previously produced to him by the applicant. But he thought there was a brighter side to the question after all. Was there not a possibility of applying suasion to a very great extent before resorting to

compulsion? He was not quite sure that every pacific means of inducement had yet been adopted for rendering the school attractive to the children. Half-time schools should be provided, and there should also be an evening school. Flogging at schools under any circumstances was to be deprecated. Incorrigible boys should be dismissed, and then sent to an industrial school, one of which existed in every important town in England with the exception of Plymouth.

METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION.

ABSTRACT OF THE REV. J. M. CHARLTON'S PAPER.

(Read March 19th, 1874.)

THE lecturer observed that the most wonderful thing in the whole universe was not St. Peter's at Rome, or the Falls of Niagara, or the starry firmament, or the glorious sun, but the mind of man, as it revealed its presence in self-consciousness, and proved its power in the discoveries of science and in the creations of art. "On earth there was nothing great but man, in man there was nothing great but mind." It followed that of all objects of scientific research the human mind was the greatest, and ought to be the most interesting. Other things were very well worthy of all the thought that had ever been expended upon them, but none of them could be compared in importance with the laws and powers of human intelligence as objects of scientific investigation. Accordingly, from the dawn of philosophy, the mind, which studied all other things, had been more. or less itself a study. But man as a sentient and intelligent being presented to the explorer two very distinct phases. They were not called to contemplate pure spirit, or, in other words, a mental or self-constituted agent per se; there was a body as well as soul, and the two were very mysteriously linked together, and reacted upon each other, so that what affected the one affected the other. investigation, therefore, of mind, which should confine itself to either element of the compound, would necessarily, at least, be onesided and partial, and issue in very imperfect results. Controversies would naturally arise between the adherents of the two sides, and

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be most interminable and useless. This, as every one knew, had been the case to a frightful extent in the conflicts of the metaphysicians, and so it would continue to be unless they learnt to give the due meed of attention to each of the two parts. It should be, however, at the commencement distinctly understood that there was a chasm which nothing could bridge over, which separated the objects of sense and perception from those of self-consciousness. No one who did not set out with clear views of this broad difference was competent to enter upon the investigation. To make the difference plain, they should observe that whatever fell under their outward observation consisted in visible forms, shapes, motions, or forces which expressed themselves in forms or motions. They might endlessly vary phenomena of this kind by the use of instruments. If they turned to the objects of self-consciousness, they found, on the other hand, that these consisted of ideas, thoughts, emotions, volitions, or affections, as in those of love and hatred, gratitude or resentment. Within this inclosure there was no length or breadth, no tastes or smells, or straight lines or curves. Now, between these two classes of objects there was a chasm which, as far as they could see, must yawn for ever. They were incommensurable quantities, utterly heterogeneous, and irreconcilable. There were grave errors into which some psychologists were particularly apt to fall, and they were those who gave their attention for the most part to the physical aspects of the mind, What they contended for was put very clearly by Herbert Spencer, who observed that the thoughts and feelings which constituted a consciousness, and were absolutely inaccessible to any but the possessor of that consciousness, formed an existence that had no place among the existences with which the rest of the science dealt. Though accumulated observation and experiment had led them by a very indirect series of inferences to the belief that mind and nervous action were the subjective and objective phases of a something, they remained utterly incapable of seeing and even of imagining how the two were related. Mind still continued to them a something without any kinship to other things, and from the science which discovered by introspection the laws of this something there was no passage by transitional steps to the sciences which discovered the laws of these other things. This essential difference being admitted, they must not expect to reach precisely the same character of results by the two modes of investigation. Physiological researches afforded

no light as to the real nature of the mind, but only disclosed the conditions under which it manifested itself in its actual connection with the bodily organization. What were they to think of those physiologists calling themselves psychologists when they talked of expressing the phenomena of mind in terms of matter, and affirmed that the brain secreted thought just the same as the liver secreted bile? But if physiology could shed no light on the real nature of the mind, of what use were its researches in connection with psychology? They brought men more exactly acquainted with the conditions under which the mind manifested its energies in its present connection with the bodily organisms. The general relation which the bodily system bore to the soul or mind consisted in its being an instrument, or rather a case of instruments, each being the vehicle of some active power which proceeded from the one living agent. The mind acted, perceived, remembered, imagined, thought, and willed through the medium of the organism with which it was united, and in its present state was able to perform its functions in no other way. The lecturer's second proposition was that introspection alone could lead them into any true or real acquaintance with the nature of the mind. The science of the mind pursued by introspection, as in the light of self-consciousness, was an independent science. From his sketch of the retrospective method, it would be seen that it formed, in the strictest sense of the word, a science proceeding, as all real sciences did, by analysis, resting upon the truth of consciousness in all its essential and principal data. It was clear that of all the wonderful and glorious things in this wide universe of being, as known to them, the highest and greatest was the human mind, in the light of direct consciousness. "Mind, it seeth; mind, it heareth; all beside is deaf and blind."