devastation that might follow their united and concentrated efforts against the peace and order and well-being of society. I simply call your attention to what may be the injurious effect of their silent action as voters at the polls. In each of twelve States there are more than one hundred thousand of these voters, and in eleven States these illiterate voters outnumber the votes cast by either of the political parties in the last presidential election; thus, should they unite under one infatuated leader, they would have absolute control of State legislation, of the State offices, and of the election of twenty-two members of the United States Senate and of all the members of Congress from those States. Again, running down the columns of these direful and alarming figures, and taking into account the votes of political parties in the same election, we find that in all but five States in the Union there are enough of these illiterate voters, by their united action, to have reversed the result of that election in each of these States, whatever it was. The press and public mind are occupied with questions of tariff, questions of capital and labor, questions of corporations and private rights. Do they sufficiently consider what material these ignorant masses offer for the destructive explosions that have occurred in connection with these questions? Does the press consider that none of its information, none of its pleadings, none of the considerations it presents, can be read even by the 6,001,745 illiterates ten years old and over, and that all its voices. of warning and instruction fall for them on deaf ears? Before passing from this class of considerations, you will pardon me for reminding you that many of our intelligent people show an indisposition to participate in political action, and that generally the more ignorant can be rallied to do what their leaders desire; and, in the light of this fact, I beg to turn to the Tribune Almanac for 1882, and, after adding up the column of votes cast, to draw from it the number whose votes were not cast or were not counted in the last election; the result gives a total in all the States of 1,795,568, or more than half of the number who voted on either side, and, as a rule, numerous enough in each State to have reversed the result of the election. No summary of points of special interest in education from a national view should omit the condition of education in the territories. Here we are confronted with the Indian problems, all of which it is easy to be seen could be speedily solved if the 60,000 Indian children should be educated for a few school generations. In the territories, too, are the children of the 30,000 Alaskans without legal provision for their education; here, too, is the large Spanish and substantially foreign population of New Mexico, with little or no provision for instruction in the English language or American thought. Then, too, the 150,000 polygamists, who, in the face of the Edmunds Bill, are said to have increased this year ten per cent. by immigration from foreign countries, have children that especially need efficient schools conducted in the American spirit. Over all these questions in the territories Congress has supreme, unquestioned control. Besides, if we are to receive annually, as last year, a total of three-quarters of a million of people of diverse nationalties, though they have only four. teen per cent. of illiterates, all should be surrounded with the institutions and sources of information that may aid them in conforming to our ideas and customs, and there should be no lack of school privileges for their children. Again, what shall the children do, in the absence of apprenticeship, to give skill and character to handicraft? is asked in every educational discussion. The Nation has endowed a college of agriculture and mechanic arts in each State; and these institutions are all, with a measure of merit, but with varying success, making their contributions to the solution of the problem of industrial education. But the needed elementary aid is yet wanting. Passing from point to point thus abruptly along these outline views that open here and there into vast vistas that we have no time to study, allow me to ask, What are you going to do about it? Will you allow the ship of state to float on as she is, trusting that she and all she carries is safe so long as we hurrah loud enough and display plenty of bunting? Shall we leave the care, the anxiety, to the agencies now operating, those that we have enumerated, and the great voluntary activities of temperance, and science, and reform? Have we not seen how each, and finally all, of the agencies are unequal to the task of universal education, which, like spring, shall leave no corner of the land untouched? Has there not been in our hearts and on our lips one great patron, the Nation, not yet sufficiently invoked, but the only one equal in power and ample in means to meet the present emergency, not by displacing or by controlling either family, church, or State, or voluntary activity, but by its patronage, by its moral influence, by a reasonable disbursement from its treasury, accompanied only by conditions that shall make its expenditure honest and efficient? This is the patron whose aid given to the States would lift the burdens impossible for all the other agencies to bear, and by its aid stimulate them to greater endeavor by assuring their hope of success. Clearly this aid by the General Government to education can do no violence to that constitutional provision which authorizes Congress to act for the general welfare, and under which so many millions have been so freely voted to roads, rivers, and internal improvements. The policy of this aid accords with the traditions and practices of the Government from its foundation. Out of it came the great grants of land to common schools and to universities that have had such incalculable influence upon the destiny of the newer States. In accord with it, too, was that wise grant in aid of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. The General Government is the largest patron of science. Under it more researches are conducted than under any other agency among us. For the enlightenment of the citizen it carries on one of the largest printing establishments in the world. Its aid in the establishment of libraries reaches millions of dollars. This sending abroad of light and knowledge to every nook and corner where the citizen lives is not the centralization of power, but the reverse. It aids every locality to judge and act intelligently for itself. Further, the General Government aided the establishment of the first institution,-that at Hartford,-for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and has crowned all the institutions of that class in the several States by that noble one, the Deaf Mute College at Washington, the first of its rank in the world, be it said to the honor of American statesmen. When the blind had in vain sought aid in obtaining literature elsewhere, the General Government gave a permanent fund of a quarter of a million for a printing house for the blind, and those in every congressional district may have the benefit. In 1836, when the national treasury was more than full, a surplus of over $20,000,000 was disbursed among the States, receiving it as a loan, and in a number of instances was used by them to increase their school funds,—thus promoting that revival of education which was then arousing the indifferent and overcoming the hostile, and specially contributing to the preparation of the generation which saved the Union. Only the General Government can do justice to all the interests affected by that great river, the Father of Waters; only the General Government has been found equal to cope with that terrible plague, the yellow fever. So only can the Nation meet the greatness of the present emergency by adequately aiding existing agencies, and enable the people to cope with the plague of ignorance, more fatal to human good than any leprosy which can assail the body. Besides, we must not forget that the Nation, by the older constitution, must guarantee to each State a republican form of government, and by later provision we are aware that the Nation has assumed to protect the citizenship of those formerly slaves. And do we not know, if the theories are sound on which rest our institutions of freedom, that, in the execution of either of these trusts, the Nation would in vain marshal armies till they were as oppressive as those of the old world, and that equally in vain it would add statute to statute, if the people themselves,-the people resident in the locality in peril,do not possess or do not acquire that intelligence and virtue without. which a republican form of government and the enjoyment of American citizenship are absolutely impossible? It was the belief of the fathers, and it is a truth by which we must abide, that the free, intelligent choice of the people is our only safety. If the Nation may use its navies and armies to guarantee this safety and fail, as it must if no other means are employed, may it not rightfully, at least as a generous patron, bestow the means to aid the States in building school-houses or in paying teachers, whereby the people may be so enlightened that they shall come of their own free will to know, cherish, achieve, and defend this result. Is not the great patriotic thought and the increasing anxiety for the republic strongly gravitating to this conclusion, and pointing to our national statesmen as the men on whom the final responsibility for adequate action rests? The fathers of the republic, before they had gone the half of twenty years, saw the defects and weaknesses of their first action, and achieved their greatest triumphs of statesmanship in a careful revision of their first steps and in giving affairs a new departure. Have not our statesmen, in the great changes of the last twenty years, seen the imperative need of another revision, and discovered the opportunity by giving to universal suffrage the guarantee of universal intelligence to add new assurances to the prosperity and continuance of our liberties and new glories to American statesmanship? Then shall "Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,— The queen of the world and the child of the skies; APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE WORK OF TEACHING. BY JOHN E. BRADLEE. ANALYSIS. Introduction.-Importance of the subject. I. Nature of the Mind. II. Distribution of the Mental Powers. III. Psychological Principles which Apply to the Work of Teaching. I. The intellectual faculties are distinguished from each other by the order of their development. 2. The activity of the higher powers is conditioned upon the activity of the lower. 3. The mind tends to repeat its activities. 4. The best attention is that which is given spontaneously. 5. The mind naturally proceeds from the specific to the general, and from the concrete to the abstract. 6. The learner should advance from the simple to the complex. 7. The mind should be conducted to the unknown through the medium of the known. IV. The Practical Work of the Teacher. 1. Remarkable progress made by the child before the school age is reached; schemes for continuing it; Pestalozzi; Froebel; Use and Misuse of ObjectLessons; Necessity of toys to the child; Summary of aims in Primary Teaching. 2. Training the Senses; Forming Habits of Observation. 3. Order of Studies; Can Study be made Attractive? Bain's View; The Opposite Opinion; The Love of Knowledge; English Grammar; Arithmetic, The Elements of Science and Natural History. 4. Training the Memory. 5. Importance of Language Studies. 6. Formation of Habits of Independent Investigation. V. Concluding Observations. 1. The qualities of mind and character which are required by the scholar must be in the teacher. 2. Alternation of work should be provided for. 3. The teacher must study his pupils. ESSAY. The mind is self-active. Whatever influence is to be exerted upon it by educational processes must be in accordance with its nature and laws of growth. These must be clearly apprehended if we would avoid friction and waste in our efforts to train it to its highest perfection. It is not a storehouse to be filled; it is not a machine to be |