fleeing for life from their own fire, and we think of the mountain howitzer and the revolving mule.

Of the many sophistries which are thus scattered in a more or less promiscuous way, there is time to note but two or three. One of these notions is that the training of a boy's hands to a particular trade is of equal importance, to the State, with the education of his mind. The truth of the matter is simply this: Such a training of the hands is a good and useful thing, especially to the individual concerned; and there are a number of pressing necessities which will drive men up to this, but the education of the mind is an absolutely indispensable thing for the well-being of the State; and yet, there are no such immediate pressing urgencies felt by the individual and driving him up to furnish this to his children. Accordingly, while the one can be left to the individual, the other must be secured, beyond all peradventure, by the State. Mark the essential difference: the necessity of getting a living forces itself upon every man, for his own, immediate, selfish interest. The necessity of educating his children has no such visible urgency upon the ignorant man; that is for the interest of others, rather than his own selfish interest; and the consequences, even to them, are too remote and far-reaching to be appreciable by his dull mind. No doubt the State would be better off for having an abundance of skilled artisans, but intelligent men it must have, or it is on the broad road to ruin. And it is for precisely this reason that every wise community looks out first of all for public education of a high grade. The security of society, the stability of all our institutions, the progress of all good things among us, absolutely depend, not on the training of the fingers to certain trades, but on the education of the mind to high intelligence.

Education by the State tends to none of those forty different evil things which the revolving demagogue points at in his successive wild attacks. It is simply the determination of the State to protect itself, and to secure the safety and progress of society. The evolution of mankind from a savage state has consisted simply of this, the growth of human intelligence. There is but one way to secure this as a perma nent possession: it is by taking the children and youth and educating their minds. It is a way that was discovered a long while ago, and unless we are going back to the dark ages we are not likely to abandon it

now.

People should remember that in talking about public education, they are discussing a very serious problem. We have a great mass of ignorance and vice already in our midst; and already a great mass of children who will, as surely as the successive suns rise, grow up to ignorance and vice unless we all, i. e. unless the State itself looks out for them. If our institutions are to be preserved, to say nothing of improving them, men had better take sober and conservative ground on those matters. A second sophistry is the assertion made by illiterate persons (and by those more literate whose business it is to pander to them) that the schools

and colleges encourage idleness, and do not train boys and girls to useful work. They imply, if they do not assert, that the activity of the intellect-that good, hard, thorough study is not honest work. The truth is, if a man affirms that learning a difficult subject is not work, it simply shows that it is so long since he learned anything that he has entirely forgotten the sensation. And if he affirms that it is not honest work, he insults the whole world of active brains. If there is any one thing that public education does accomplish, it is the training of children and youths to work. Day after day they come to their field of labor in the school-room, each with an assigned task, which, in spite of any feeling of indolence, in spite of distractions and hindrances, it is his duty, and if the school is properly conducted his pleasure, to do. There never was a more shallow and utterly unjust accusation against our schools than the one we sometimes hear, that they do not teach boys and girls to labor and to respect labor. For it is the very core and essence of the whole public school system, that it trains the pupil daily to do some definite piece of work, and to do it well. The truth is, that, proportionally to the child's powers, his daily task in the school-room is probably as hard work as he will ever be called on to do in the whole course of his life; and he learns there a habit of self-denial, of self-control, of conscientious application to duty, which would alone go far to make a man of him; and this, moreover, is a moral training of the very highest order. There is no work which a boy can do that is half so useful to society as the labor of his intelligence; for it is that, and that alone, which can fit him to serve society in whatever best way he is capable of. We do not need the labor of children and boys in carrying on the industrial work of the world. The best use we can put them to, the use we must put them to if we would secure the future of society, the only use we have any right to put them to, in fairness to their own birthright, is to give them the opportunity to be intelligent men. Then, if they become mechanics, they will be intelligent mechanics; if they become farmers, teachers, writers, statesmen-whatever they are, they will do their work intelligently and well; and they will be safe and useful citizens of a country that requires for its safety, not machines, but thinking men. And yet there are prosperous men who begrudge the tax they pay for public education; and there are even ministers of prosperous churches who decry all but the three R's in the free schools of our country.

The truth is, the opponents of the higher education catch much of their talk from abroad. In aristocratic governments there is naturally great fear lest the lower classes should be educated above their station in life. These governments want, first of all, to have a contented peasantry. But, fortunately, in this country, we want no such ignorant peasantry. How dare these aristocrats in disguise stand up and say to our people: "I am a superior being; it is safe for me to be intelligent; I may study, and read, and think, for I belong to the higher classes. For you, only a low grade of education is safe. There is danger that

you will be educated above your station in life! Grovel there in your ignorance and degradation, and be contented, while I walk by in my higher intelligence, and decide for you how much arithmetic and geography it is prudent to let your children learn!" It is a wonder they do not alter their Bibles and read there, "Suffer the little children of the higher classes to come unto Me."

No, it is too late, in these days and, in this free country of ours, to limit our public education to the bare prevention of absolute and brutish ignorance. We must give our children-all our children-of rich and poor-of citizen and countryman-the State's children-for they are hers as well as ours-those liberal opportunities to make the most of themselves which we name the higher education. Nor must it be left to the uncertain establishment and maintenance of institutions by individuals or jealous sects. We must sustain, by and through that organization of society which we call the State, the whole system of free public educa tion, open to all who will come, generous and ample in its scope, from the kindergarten up to the State university. We claim it in the name of justice and fair play to the coming generation; we claim it in the name of our reputation among the foremost peoples of the world, and we claim it in the name of that commonwealth-that possession of high virtue and intelligence, which has slowly lifted the race from barbarism to enlightenment, and which alone can insure its future.

THE STATE AND HIGHER EDUCATION.

BY HERBERT B. ADAMS, PH. D.,

Associate Professor of History in the Johns Hopkins University.

This is an era of educational endowment upon a generous scale. A recently published report of Colonel N. H. R. Dawson, Commissioner of Education, shows that the sum total of noteworthy educational gifts during the year 1886-87, was nearly $5,000,000. More than two- thirds of the entire amount were distributed among nine institutions, four of them collegiate, one academic, three professional, and one technical. The institution most highly favored was Harvard University, which received from individual sources nearly a million dollars. From one man came a legacy of $630,000. Haverford College, supported by the Society of Friends, received $700,000 in one bequest. Of the 209 gifts recorded by the Commissioner of Education, 25 represent $50,000 or more; 72 were sums between $5,000 and $49,000; and 112 were sums less than $5,000. The most striking fact in all this record of philan thropy is that such a large proportion of the entire amount, fully twothirds, was given to higher education. The year 1888 is richer than 1887 in individual bounty to institutions of learning. Nearly ten millions were given by three persons for the encouragement of manual training, but there are rumors of even larger benefactions for university endowment. The collective returns for 1888 are not yet published, but it is certain that the past year will surpass any hitherto recorded in the annals of American education.

Whatever forms modern philanthropy may take, one thing is certain, universities are not likely to be forgotten. At the founding of the new Catholic University in Washington, Bishop Spalding said that a university "is an institution which, better than anything else, symbolizes the aim and tendencies of modern life." Will not broad-minded people recognize the truth of this statement and strengthen existing founda. tions? Senator Hoar, at the laying of the corner-stone of the new Clark University, said, "The university is the bright consummate flower of democracy." Will not American patriots cultivate endowments made by the generosity of sons of the people? Are the noble gifts of Johns Hopkins for the advancement of learning and the relief of suffering likely to be forgotten by present or future generations? All history

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testifies to the gradual up-building of universities by individual benefactions. The development of European and American colleges is one long record of private philanthropy. Private philanthropy will do all it can, but public interest demands that the State should do its part.

The encouragement of higher education by government aid, in one form or another, has been a recognized principle of public policy in every enlightened state, whether ancient or modern. Older than the recognition of popular education as a public duty was the endowment of colleges and universities at public expense for the education of men who were to serve church or state. It is a mistake to think that the foundation of institutions by princes or prelates was a purely private matter. The money or the land always came from the people in one form or another, and the benefit of endowment returned to the people sooner or later. Popular education is the historic outgrowth of the higher education in every civilized country, and those countries which have done most for universities have the best schools for the people. It is an error to suppose that endowment of the higher learning is confined to Roman and German emperors, French and English kings. Crowned and uncrowned republics have pursued the same public pol icy. Indeed, the liberality of government towards art and science always increases with the progress of liberal ideas, even in monarchical countries like Germany, where, since the introduction of parliamentary government, appropriations for university education have greatly increased. The total cost of maintaining the Prussian universities, as shown by the reports of our Commissioner of Education, is about two million dollars a year. Only about nine per cent. of this enormous outlay is met by tuition fees. The state contributes all the rest in endowments and appropriations. Prussia now gives to her universities more than twice as much as she did before the Franco-Prussian War, as shown by the report of our commissioner at the Paris Exposition in 1867. In that year France gave her faculties of higher instruction only $765,764. After the overthrow of the second empire, popular appropriations for higher education greatly increased. The budget for 1888 shows that France now appropriates for college and university faculties $2,330,000 a year, more than three times the amount granted under Louis Napoleon. Despotism is never so favorable to the highest interests of education as is popular government. Louis XIV and Frederick the Great, according to the authority of Roscher, the political economist, regarded universities, like custom-houses, as sources of revenue, for the maintenance of absolute forms of government. The world is growing weary of royal munificence when exercised at the people's expense, with royal grants based upon popular benevolence and redounding to the glory and profit of the prince rather than to the folk upholding his throne. Since the introduction of constitutional government into European states, representatives of the people are taking the power of educational endowment and subsidy into their own hands, and