one meridian to pass through the cornea of the observer. If he wishes to look at a painting done by an artist whose vision is normal, or nearly so, the observer turns the slit around to correspond with the meridian of his own best vision. If, however, he looks at a picture in which it is desirable to have overlapping of the retinal images—at one, where the colors must be mixed in the eye, for example—it is necessary to rotate the slit to another position, usually at right angles to the first, and with this a canvas which before showed too clearly the blotches of color now becomes blended into a much more perfect whole. I would recommend this simple device to any one who has not already experimented with it. Thus, by adjusting our own personal equation of eyesight to that of the artist, we literally obtain his point of view. The colors are heightened, the daubs blend, and new beauties appear. Instead of seeking, like our friend mentioned at first, for "the handiest way to get out of this 'ere place," we are glad to stay longer to study and to enjoy. Here, as everywhere, it is art and science together that yield the richest result. If science is allowed to be the interpreter, we may gain a heightened enjoyment of art, and the artist a comforting increase of appreciation.
| THE PHYSICAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION. |
By EUGENE L. RICHARDS,
PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN YALE UNIVERSITY.
IT would be as unwise as it is impossible to expect that every person engaged in education should be able to survey the whole field. Each educator takes a part, and is very apt to think that his or her part is the most important. Education, until quite recently, has been so widely regarded as brain culture that the whole trend of education is to develop the mind as one organ of the body, as if mind resided in the brain alone. And even those who know and admit that the mind is something more than brain, disregard the fact in their systems of education, following almost unconsciously the old ruts. Thus Bain says in one place: "The organ of mind is not the brain by itself; it is the brain, nerves, muscles, organs of sense, and viscera." And yet, in Education as a Science, he says: "Now, when we inquire into the meaning of physical education, we find it to be the rearing of a healthy human being by all the arts and devices of nursing, feeding, clothing, and general regimen. Mill includes this subject in his article, and Mr. Herbert Spencer devotes a very interesting chapter to it in his work on Education. It seems to me, however, that this department may be kept quite separate, important
