"cram" will become "good cram," and a plausible excuse be thrown over one of the most extensive vices of education.
Prof. Jevons's object is to defend competitive examinations; and there is a painful significance in the fact that he admits the system to be so involved and bound up with the practice of "cram," that nothing remains but to west the word from its established meaning, and give it a new and respectable meaning. His tactics are ingenious, but nothing is gained by them. However the words are altered, the facts will remain.
Prof. Jevons strives to strengthen his view by carrying it out into the application of practical life, which he maintains to be little else than a sphere of incessant "cram." He says: "The actual facts which a man deals with in life are infinite in number, and cannot be remembered in a finite brain . . . . In some cases we require to remember a thing only a few moments or a few minutes; in other cases a few hours or days; in yet other cases a few weeks or months; it is an infinitesimally small part of all our mental impressions which can be profitably remembered for years. Memory may be too retentive, and facility of forgetting and of driving out one train of ideas by a new train is almost as essential to a well-trained intellect as faculty of retention." He then goes on to say that the lawyer, the physician, the merchant, "deal every day with various combinations of facts which cannot all be stored up in the cerebral framework, and certainly need not be so. . . . . The practical barrister 'crams' his brief;" and "what is 'cram' but the rapid acquisition of a series of facts, the vigorous getting up of a case?"
Now the upshot of all this is, that in life we have constantly to make temporary acquisitions, and which often require vigorous exertion. But will it be pretended that the making of temporary acquisitions is the legitimate work of education? A lawyer may "cram" his case, but if he succeeds with it he must not have crammed his law. There is undoubtedly a varying value in mental acquisitions; some are not worth retaining, and others are of lasting importance. But there are facts, truths, principles, that should be indelibly engraved upon the minds of students: these should be the staple of education, and be the means of that deliberate discipline which it is the chief object of education to impart. Our educational system is virtually at fault in not having yet organized a curriculum in which acquisitions of permanent value are made fundamental. Prof. Jevons says: "If things taught at school and college are to stay in the mind, to serve us in the business of life, then almost all the higher education yet given in this kingdom has missed its mark." Exactly; and for this reason the system is under sharp arraignment, and a "new education" is demanded. Prof. Jevons's assertion that many things are not worth retaining in the mind, naturally leads to the vital question, "What knowledge is of most worth?" To make his argument good, that knowledge may be crammed because of its worthlessness, he must show that no knowledge is worth retaining, and all is to be stuffed with a view to getting rid of it.
A BASELESS RUMOR.
The Rev. Moncure D. Conway writes gossipy letters from London to the Cincinnati Commercial, and in his eagerness for sensational statements, as is usually the case with gossips, is quite too careless of their truth. He has started the story that the closing portions of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Sociology" are so loosely and badly written as to indicate that Spencer is showing a decline of his mental powers. This has created anxiety in the minds of many, and we have re-
