purpose. The practical men insist on keeping up a routine of teaching things which can be tested by Examination. It is easy to rail at practical men, but they are the drag on our impetuosity. Magna est Veritas et prevalebit. A doctrine which does not prevail is not, yet, quite true. The resistance of practical men to our efforts is the resistance of the calyx to the premature unveiling of the imperfect corolla. Instead of railing against those who oppose us, would it not be better to mature our ideas and make our method complete, and therefore irresistible?
The truth is that, in the desperate struggle on behalf of the principle that Education means educing faculty the supporters of that principle are too much losing sight of the vital question:—What faculties is it most important to educe? Where the advocates of Education versus Examination get their own way, the result often is that too much mental force is absorbed into a minute and monkey-like inquisitiveness about visible phenomena, and often the production of a skill, more wonderful than useful, in the observation of certain classes of facts to the neglect of all other facts; and in the study of mathematical methods of analysis of principles, to the neglect of vital comprehension of the principles themselves in their bearing on human development.
Gratry is as sure as any Science-teacher of the present day, that Education means educing the faculties by which man discovers Truth for himself. But:—what Truth? And what faculties? The highest object of intellectual culture, according to Gratry, is to educe and fortify the sense by which we perceive what the Unseen Teacher is saying to us.
