those engaging in it without doing
their best.

It must be admitted, however, that the highest evidence and safeguard of
truth is application. In every other science, the utility test is final.
The great parent sciences--mathematics, physics, chemistry,
physiology--have each a host of filial dependents, in close contact with
the supply of human wants; and the success of the applications is the
testimony to the truth of the sciences applied. Thus, although we may
not narrow the sphere of truth to bread and butter, yet we have no surer
test of the truth itself. Our trade requires navigation, and navigation
verifies astronomy; and, but for navigation, we may be pretty confident
that astronomy would now have very little accuracy to boast of.

To come then to the practical bearings or outgoings of psychology,
assisted by logic. My contention is that the parent sciences and the
filial sciences should be carried on together; that theses should be
extracted by turns from all; that the lights thus obtained would be
mutual. I will support the position by a review of the subjects thus
drawn into the metaphysical field.

* * * * *

[PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION.]

Foremost among these applied sciences I would place EDUCATION, the
subject of the day. The priority of mention is due not so much to its
special or pre-eminent importance, as to its being the most feasible and
hopeful of the practical applications of conjoined psychology and logic.
I say this, however, with a more express eye to _intellectual_
education. I deem it quite possible to frame a practical, science
applicable to the training of the intellect that shall be precise and
definite in a very considerable measure. The elements that make up our
intellectual furniture can be stated with clearness; the laws of
intellectual growth or acquisition are almost the best ascertained
generalities of the human mind; even the most complicated studies can be
analyzed into their components, partly by psychology and partly by the
higher logic. In a word, if we cannot make a science of education, as
far as Intellect is concerned, we may abandon metaphysical study
altogether.

I do not speak with the same confidence as to _moral_ education. There
has long been in existence a respectable rule-of-thumb practice in this
region, the result of a sufficiently wide experience. There are certain
psychological laws, especially those relating to the formation of mo