Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/140

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
128
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The wording of this answer was not considered quite correct by the attentive class, and a correction was made.

"What two kinds of judgment of extent are there?" asked the teacher.

"The two kinds of judgment of extent are common judgments of extent and scientific judgments of extent."

"What is a common judgment of extent?" and the turning of the card brought to her feet a ruddy-faced young woman, who said with considerable rapidity, "A common judgment of extent is the knowing that one judgment of extent is included in the concept of another, without genii or species."

A titter admonished her, and she hastily corrected her statement: "I mean, without genii or speciei."

The answer finally accepted as correct was that "a common judgment of extent is the knowing that one judgment of extent is included in the judgment of another without being included as a species of the genus."

Is it not lamentable to think that, in these days, when science is giving so real a character to human knowledge, such unprofitable verbiage as the above should still be foisted upon the minds of students in our most reputable educational institutions? As Mr. Burk very well points out, the sciences of biology and anthropology have revealed the mind as something subject to definite though very complex laws of growth, and have completely overturned the mediæval conception of it as a thing organized and partitioned off according to the methods of thought of adult and fully self-conscious human beings. All questions therefore relating to conscience, will, and judgment should, in relation to education at least, be considered as questions of phase in a developing organism, not as questions of hard fact in a fully and finally developed system. It is satisfactory to learn that in one or two institutions Mr. Burk found the modern point of view fairly well recognized. We hope his article will hasten a much-needed change in pedagogic methods.


POLITICAL BOSSISM.

In former days people used to grow restive periodically under the abuses of monarchical or autocratic government; and there were those who fondly believed that, if monarchy as an institution could be done away with and the people left free to govern themselves, all political troubles would cease. Well, in certain countries, and notably in this, every vestige of monarchy in the hereditary sense has been abolished; the people are free to govern themselves; and yet, judging by the discussions that we read in the daily press, the golden age seems still to delay its coming. The complaint used to be that the monarch was forgetful of the true interests of his subjects, that too much was sacrificed to court intrigues and private favoritism; and, strange to say, we hear to-day complaints which run on precisely the same lines, though directed against quite another class of authorities. Instead of the intrigues of a court we have the intrigues of committees and their managers; and just as before, but perhaps to an even greater extent, the people find that their real interests are being neglected while their supposed servants, but actual rulers, are assigning places and carving out the public wealth with a view mainly to their own convenience and the perpetuation of their power. At the present moment there is in this very community a specially bitter outcry against the evils of political bossism, and thousands of worthy citizens have taken counsel together in the hope of casting asunder the bands which they find so oppressive. If they can by a prodigious effort break the power of the ruling boss, things,