ur
emancipation from the grossest superstitions. But for science we should
be still worshipping fetishes; or, with hecatombs of victims,
propitiating diabolical deities. And yet this science, which, in place
of the most degrading conceptions of things, has given us some insight
into the grandeurs of creation, is written against in our theologies and
frowned upon from our pulpits.

Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the family of
knowledges, Science is the household drudge, who, in obscurity, hides
unrecognised perfections. To her has been committed all the works; by
her skill, intelligence, and devotion, have all conveniences and
gratifications been obtained; and while ceaselessly ministering to the
rest, she has been kept in the background, that her haughty sisters
might flaunt their fripperies in the eyes of the world. The parallel
holds yet further. For we are fast coming to the _denouement_, when the
positions will be changed; and while these haughty sisters sink into
merited neglect, Science, proclaimed as highest alike in worth and
beauty, will reign supreme.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION

There cannot fail to be a relationship between the successive systems of
education, and the successive social states with which they have
co-existed. Having a common origin in the national mind, the
institutions of each epoch, whatever be their special functions, must
have a family likeness. When men received their creed and its
interpretations from an infallible authority deigning no explanations,
it was natural that the teaching of children should be purely dogmatic.
While "believe and ask no questions" was the maxim of the Church, it was
fitly the maxim of the school. Conversely, now that Protestantism has
gained for adults a right of private judgment and established the
practice of appealing to reason, there is harmony in the change that has
made juvenile instruction a process of exposition addressed to the
understanding. Along with political despotism, stern in its commands,
ruling by force of terror, visiting trifling crimes with death, and
implacable in its vengeance on the disloyal, there necessarily grew up
an academic discipline similarly harsh--a discipline of multiplied
injunctions and blows for every breach of them--a discipline of
unlimited autocracy upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black-hole. On
the other hand, the increase of political liberty, the abolition of laws
restricting individua