Review of the New Education.

BY SAMUEL EADON, M.A., M.D., PH.D., F.S.A., ETC.

I have read very carefully the third edition of the “New Education,” and feel impelled, in order to satisfy my conscientiousness, to write a short article relative to the impressions which the reading of the book produced in my mind.

It is a work of extraordinary merit. Like George Combe’s “Constitution of Man,” it is highly suggestive; the fascination of the author was such that I could not help but write. To know its value and appreciate its lofty moral outpourings, people must buy the book and read for themselves. The first thought would be that it is the production of an original thinker who had the courage to utter opinions fearless of results, however antagonistic to the common-herd notions.

In all ages, the human understanding, the reasoning faculties, have ever been considered to hold the supremacy in the scale of development, of culture, and of advance toward a higher form of civilization; the moral faculties were thought next in order, and then the propensities common to all animal natures held the third or inferior position. This view of human nature has been handed down from an elder antiquity and still retains its hold largely in the universities and great public schools of the present day.

If this view of the nature of man be a correct one, there ought to be a vast intellectual brotherhood of mankind; but it is not so. From the days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, this culture of the intellectual power has been continuously pursued, but with very slender results; for were this kind of education pursued for 100,000 years, the morale of society would be little better than it is at the present time.

Dr. Buchanan takes quite a different view and makes the moral or ethical faculties supreme, in development and culture, the intellect being the instruments for acquiring facts and the propensities the steam to bring about the desired results. According to his views of man, our emotional faculties are of a higher or more God-like order than our intellectual powers. The intellect being the hand-maid to the emotions, to feel the force of truth is higher in mental excellence than to perceive it. Depth of emotions is the climax of spiritual power.

The ethical and æsthetic being the foundation of the New Education, Dr. Buchanan, in a series of beautifully written chapters, enters into details in reference to what teachers should be, what the subjects taught ought to be, and what are the shells and what the kernels of knowledge. He shows clearly that woman will ultimately be the regenerator of humanity, that education so far has been merely fractional and one-sided—that true development consists in the co-education of soul and body, the co-education of man and woman, the co-education of the material and spiritual worlds.

There are a million of teachers, and every one should have a copy of this work. No man is fit to teach in the high sense advocated by this author unless he has thoroughly mastered this work. It is easy to pull down a system, but not so easy to build it up; but in the New Education the follies of the old educational systems are not only levelled to the dust, but a higher and more practical, industrious, and crime-preventing system of training and teaching takes its place. This book will become the grand educational Bible for teachers in all countries where the English language is spoken.

Nor should it be in the hands of teachers only. Every intelligent father and mother, anxious for the development of their sons and daughters should study this book night and day. It should be translated into every European language, and also into Chinese and other Eastern tongues; the refined, æsthetic, and knowledge-loving people of Japan, were the work translated into their language, would enjoy it intensely.

Hambrook Court, near Bristol, England.

A Japanese scholar has already undertaken the translation of the “New Education” in Japan. The Journal has not room at present for the essays of correspondents, and I have only given a small portion of the essay of the learned Dr. Eadon, who is the most progressive member of the medical profession in England.