Note 6 — Chapter I · EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.

A knowledge of the mental and moral condition of savages serves the invaluable purpose of showing what education has accomplished for the human race. There would be much less grumbling at the tax-gatherer if men could clearly conceive the condition of societies where no taxes are levied. To know what education has actually done we need to know the condition of societies unaffected by systematic education. Such a book as Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization is a helpful introduction to the history of education. Whoever reads such a book carefully will be confronted with this problem: How is it that intellectual inertness, amounting almost to stupidity, is frequently the concomitant of an acute and persistent sense-training? Besides, savage tribes are historical illustrations of what has been produced on a large scale by “following Nature.” (P.)