Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/101

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TRANSCENDENTAL GEOGRAPHY.
95

that mathematics, natural history, and even the elementary branches of knowledge, as reading, writing, arithmetic, and the hieroglyphical language, can only he correctly and safely taught by those who are thoroughly conversant with transcendental geography.

At one time, it appears, all the teaching of the country was in their hands, and every branch of knowledge was imparted to the youth accompanied by a strong dose of the transcendental science. But it gradually became apparent that these branches of useful knowledge were very imperfectly taught by them, and that everything that seemed in any way opposed to, or could lead to a doubt of the truth of, transcendental geography, was not taught at all. So that what was actually taught was not up to the mark of the real progress of those who cultivated the exact and natural sciences unhampered by transcendentalism.

Such being the case, the education of the young was taken out of the hands of the transcendental geographers, and entrusted more and more to instructors who had not graduated at the transcendental colleges. But this change was not accomplished without a severe struggle, and the transcendentalists and their partisans never ceased to lament the change, and every now and then made efforts to regain the sole control of education.

They predicted the direst calamities to the state from the practical separation of education from transcendentalism, contending that it would lead to the ruin of the moral and material welfare of the people. That the general intelligence and even the morality, had palpably gained by the separation, did not reconcile them to it. On the contrary, they denounced the