Those who have contributed from their means to create and maintain an institution naturally wish that the spirit of its studies should conform to their own opinions or doctrinal preferences. They, or their executors, have the choice of teachers, and it can not be expected that they should take professors from outside the ranks of the faithful of their own denomination. The college or university becomes thus the chattel or property of one man or a small number of men. It would be unjust not to add that these observations do not apply to all the universities of America. At Harvard, at Columbia, and half a dozen other institutions-to take the figures of Mr. Stanley Hall-emancipation is nearly complete. We are only speaking of the generality of colleges and universities.

It is noticeable, too, that the American who is so active and energetic in business matters becomes indifferent and indolent about questions which have no direct relation with practical life. Doubt does not seem to be in any sense an American product. It is astonishing how easily ready-made dogmas and a well-determined religion, which is accepted without discussion, satisfy positive, busy men, who have no time to seek for truth at their own risk and peril, through the difficulties and obscurities of philosophical speculation, and who yet wish to satisfy their need of belief. And so they like to observe Sunday by complete repose after the feverish labor of the week, and they are willing to bestow, as the crowning act of their tormented life, a docile acquiescence upon any religion which will free them from all intellectual worry and offer them the tranquil shade of traditional beliefs. Add to this that the flexibility of American theology is of a nature to facilitate adherence. If you find that you are unwilling to accept some of the numerous Christian dogmas, which you are called upon to believe, do not let that disturb you; there will always be some accommodating sect which has effaced the objectionable articles from its creed, and so can free you from the trouble of submitting your belief to them. In this profusion of different denominations, if we may be permitted to use so familiar an expression, all tastes can be satisfied. The choice is easy; the supply always responds to the demand. In France, if you have broken with one of the two or three accredited religions, you are reduced to the necessity of entering at once the diocese of free thought; there is no intermediate ground between belief and unbelief. But in the United States there is a multitude of degrees of successive steps and insensible transitions interposed between ignorant and blind bigotry on the one hand and free thought on the other, the latter being rarely met with.

*

But, however convenient for preserving liberty of conscience may be these manifold forms of a Christianity, which is more and more attenuated, in which dogma is, so to speak, reasoned out in different ways, so as to respond to a diversity of appetites, it is none the less true that the American is usually tied to some theological party or definite sect or other, so that if he does flatter himself that he is as little religions as possible by having reduced his beliefs to a minimum, he has none the more become philosophical.

ABSENCE OF TRADITIONS.

The American philosophical spirit is not sustained by the traditions of the past as it is in our old countries of Europe. Assuredly, in one sense, it is an advantage not to be compelled to follow furrows already made and to be free from the incumbrance of oppressive hereditary traditions which prescribe the course of our thought. Originality appears to have every thing to gain by the absence of established schools, and the Americans, who are a young people without a history and but recently awakened to the life of thought, seem to realize in actual life that fictitious condition of the tabula rasa in which Descartes essayed to place himself when stripping his mind of all old opinions he attempted to approach the problems of nature and the soul with a reason entirely fresh and freed from prejudices. Still, the inheritance of long-continued previous labor, even if it leaves the field of thought covered with much deadwood, is nevertheless a necessary condition for serious philosophical

development. Philosophical systems can not be improvised; they are not built in a day like a gigantic house or a colossal bridge. The complicated, refined, and penetrating turn of mind which distinguishes philosophers can only spring from the slow preparations of a progressive evolution. In Europe how many philosophers there are who are only such because they have followed the footsteps and developed the thought of some distinguished or eminent thinker whose reputation was established years or even centuries ago. From this kind come the "scholastics"-tradition has its bad side-who survive long after the disappearance of the head of their school, and who too often paralyze all invention and innovating tendencies. But in return, thanks to these legacies from the past, the habit of philosophizing has gradually insinuated itself into our minds; numberless suggestions and inspirations come to us from those who have struggled with the same problems before us; we are rounded with examples and lessons; we live in an atmosphere saturated with questionings, hypotheses, problems proposed, and formulated solutions. All this is wanting in the United States, hence Mr. Stanly Hall observes "As a nation we are not yet old enough to have had time to develop a philosophy."

IMITATION OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY.

The same author continues in the article here quoted: "We have too much curiosity and are too receptive to despair of having one hereafter." To prepare themselves for this event Americans resolutely go abroad for assistance from foreign schools. Having no philosophical traditions of their own they go to Europe for them. Philosophy is an imported article with them and, it should be added, German philosophy particularly. Our classical French philosophers are generally little known; Descartes is the only French writer who is studied in America. Among philosophers of the nineteenth century Cousin is cited once or twice in the programmes; Auguste Compte is scarcely mentioned and I hardly see any French writers besides Janet and Ribot, who are quite widely known. The Germanic iniluence is manifestly preponderating, not only in the domain of psycho-physiologieal researches, the success of which in America is not surprising, but also, and this is more remarkable, in the higher speculations of the great metaphysicians. Hegel and Kant are among the authors who are most read, if not textually, at least in the critical expositions which American authors have made of their doctrines, and it is astonishing that such a transcendental philosophy could find a place in an industrial and business community. "Kant is the Julius Cæsar and Hegel the Augustus of modern philosophy," says Professor Everett of Harvard. And, again, "Hegel is the sovereign in the world of thought and Fichte in that of life." The following translations of German philosophical classics have been published at Chicago: Kant's Critic of Pure Reason, by Morris; Watson's Schelling's Transcendental Idealism; Everett's Fichte's System of Knowledge; Kedney's Hegel's Esthetics; Noah Porter's Kant's Morals; Morris's Hegel's Philosophy of History; Harris's Hegel's Logic. The programmes show what a large place is given to German thinkers. This preference for German philosophy over English philosophy itself, although difficult to explain fully, seems to be due to several causes. First of all, and it would be ungracious not to recognize the fact, it must be attributed to the scientific value and power of German philosophic thought, and then to a number of minor reasons. When Americans go to Europe to study they hardly ever go to English universities. If only for the sake of learning a foreign language, they go to Berlin or Heidelberg or Jena, and while learning German they learn the German philosophy. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that German immigrants are the most numerous in America, and the saying is nearly true that the market for German books is nearly as good in the United States as in Germany itself. There was at one time quite a pronounced Hegelian movement at St. Louis, and it was there, it is said, that Dr. Harris became acquainted with the philosophy of the pantheistic German. The

1 Philosophy in the United States, Mind, 1879.

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, which is devoted to metaphysics, is published at St. Louis. Is not the explanation of this kind of intellectual activity to bo found in the fact that in this city of French origin-it was ceded by Louis XV in 1763-out of a population of 450,000 inhabitants about 180,000 are German? Whatever may be the cause, the fact is incontestable that German influence predominates in philosophical matters in the United States, even over English. The latter, however, also has its weight. The English psychologists from Locke to Sully are held in high esteem. Critical expositions of the doctrines of Stuart Mill and Spencer have been published, and scientific instruction is thoroughly impregnated with the evolution theory; Darwin is a la mode, his teachings being reconciled, of course, with religion and Christian doctrines. American philosophy is in process of formation under these diverse influences of continental philosophy, and what angurs favorably for its future is the prominence which is given to its study in the colleges and universities.

BROAD MEANING OF THE TERM PHILOSOPHY.

It is obvious that the term philosophy has not the same meaning in the United States as with us. In some universities, Columbia for instance, it is a synonym for the ensemble of literary studies; the philosophical faculty in Germany is a school of philology more than philosophy proper. This broad use of the term is pushed still further and is applied to scientific studies of all kinds and even to technical. Columbia College confers the title of bachelor of philosophy upon candidates who have studied only geology and paleontology, analytical and applied chemistry, or followed a course of architecture. In many universities the single degree of doctor of philosophy crowns studies of every kind, philological and scientific as well as those which are exclusively philosophical.

PHILOSOPHY PROPERLY SO CALLED.

Philosophy proper, understanding by that term the special study of psychology, logic, morals, and even metaphysics, is no less in honor in American universities. And as far as psychology is concerned, including physiological and experimental psychology, for studying which special laboratories are provided, furnished with every kind of instrument for research, American universities have nothing to envy in those of the Old World. Photographs of the different rooms of the psychological laboratory at Harvard, to cite only one instance, were shown and much admired at Chicago. In America philosophical studies are regarded as peculiarly belonging to higher education, and it would seem at first sight as if the intention was to exclude them from secondary instruction, but such is not the fact. Philosophy is not reserved for graduates alone but helps to form graduates-bachelors of arts and of philosophy. It is part of the college curriculum before becoming part of the university course. Nor is it, as with us, reserved for a single class-the last in our plan of studies but is taught in the last two years of the college course to juniors and seniors, and sometimes to sophomores. At the present time when the question is being discussed in France whether the teaching of philosophy should be retained in the lycées or be relegated to the faculties, it will not be uninteresting to consider in detail how the matter goes in some of the more important institutions of the United States. [After giving the programme of Harvard and the report of the experimental laboratory, the author concludes as follows:] It is not only at Harvard that the psychological laboratory is organized. Clark, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Columbia, and others have equipped them at great expense. This is one of the distinctive traits of the philosophic movement in America. Professor Royce declares that two branches of philosophical study have prospered in the United States, one is experimental psychology and the other the history of philosophy. To this should be added, perhaps, the study of social morals, which is certainly carried further in American universities than with us, where it is too much neglected. Here is the

course of applied ethics at Clark: The subjects of study are normal and pathological forms of human life; criminal anthropology, criminal embryology, the object of which is to collect from "all the kingdoms of nature"-i. e., even from animals"the acts which committed by man become criminal." Then there are divisions and subdivisions of anthropometry, craniology, physiognomy, teratology, etc.

It is, therefore, incontestable that the colleges and universities of America are making praiseworthy efforts to develop for their students an almost complete system of instruction in philosophy. From 16 to 20 years the American student can, if he wishes, acquire a better idea of philosophy than his comrades of the same age in Europe; and these ideas are taken from the most recent authors. There is no reserve of even the most delicate questions. The school youth are placed au courant with everything which contemporary innovators are thinking. There is, besides, no official doctrine or uniform tendency. Opposite opinions are often met with in the same university. It is true that by a general understanding all teachers show themselves respectful and deferential to religious beliefs.

SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

We take from M. Compayré's report on secondary instruction in the United States several extracts in which the author brings out features that impressed him as a foreigner and which he was able to criticise, both as a competent observer of great experience, and especially as an outsider. In selecting the passages on methods of study it has been the aim to take those which treat especially of the subjects that conduce to culture rather than those in which the studies that qualify for business are handled. M. Compayré begins with general considerations on secondary instruction which is given, he says, in high schools, academies, and in colleges. In other words, notwithstanding appearances and the intentions of the Americans themselves, who in their defective definition only assign high schools and similar institutions to this grade of instruction, American secondary instruction comprises two parts and is divided into two periods. On one hand are the public or private schools, which are either common to both sexes (when they are public) or are for one sex only, which differ in their programmes and in the duration of their studies, and give a course of instruction corresponding nearly to that of our classes of grammar (sixth, fifth, and fourth), or of the first year of our secondary modern instruction; and on the other hand are the colleges with their traditionary four years of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes, which are nearly the equivalent of the higher classes of the French lycées, and lead to the baccalaureate degree, which is obtained on graduation. The Americans, therefore, give, so to speak, without knowing it, secondary instruction in their colleges, while they refer these institutions to higher and professional instruction. Words do not have the same meaning with them as with us. Secondary instruction in their point of view only represents an intermediary grade or transition between primary studies and the higher instruction of colleges and universities. In France a lycée or a college consists of a series of progressive classes, in which the same students receive a continuous instruction, formed on the same principles, which is adapted to a general preparation for active life or for professional studies. In America secondary instruction is made up of pieces or portions, at least of two portions, the high schools and the colleges. And in some States, in Massachusetts notably, certain secondary studies, that of Latin for example, have been introduced into the grammar schools which are the highest grade of primary schools, so that a little secondary instruction is found in every grade of instruction without being distinctly organized in any one. It is true that in the great majority of colleges the two parts of American secondary instruction are found associated or juxtaposed by combining the preparatory departments, so called, with the collegiate. Of 381 colleges and universities enumerated in the statistics for 1888-89 there were only 40 which did not have both a preparatory and collegiate department. It is to be remarked that the colleges without a preparatory department are found principally in the Eastern States-New York and

Massachusetts-where pedagogical organization is most complete, from which it may be inferred that the separation is regarded as an advance, and that where the high schools are numerous and well organized the colleges do not concern themselves with preparatory instruction.

The Americans themselves are the first to recognize the imperfections of their system of secondary instruction, but are not, perhaps, so sensible as we would be of the incoherence of an organization which intrusts to different institutions the successive development of one uninterrupted grade of instruction. One inconvenience which results from this arrangement is that a majority of the high-school pupils do not pursue their studies further. While in France nearly all the pupils of the quatrième continue their studies until the end of the secondary grade, hardly a sixth of the population of the American high schools pass on into the colleges. Possibly the Americans do not yet realize sufficiently what confusion there is in the management of their high schools, which are half secondary and half superior primary institutions, by the simultaneous attendance of pupils who do not intend to pass beyond the high schools and those who are preparing for college and the universities. Think what disorder, what a pedagogical medley would result if all the grammar classes were suddenly suppressed in our colleges and lycées and the superior primary schools were to take their place, and, by a partial transformation, through the introduction of Latin and Greek into their course, were to invite to their heterogeneous lessons-half French and scientific, half classic and Greek-Latin-an indiscriminate crowd of pupils, some of whom intended to take the humanities while the others expected no more than simple primary instruction of a superior grade. The evil from which American secondary instruction suffers has an historical explanation. When their existence began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no intermediate grade between the primary schools and the colleges and universities. Later the State, or, to speak more correctly, the States, took in hand the organization of the primary schools, which became the common schools, but they left the colleges and universities alone as having an independent life of their own. Then the directing powers proceeded to intercalate an intermediate class of institutions between the common schools and the private colleges, which should unite the two and also be public schools. This was the origin of the high schools, and as they were established at the public expense, it was necessary to take into account both their adaptation to the wants of the majority of the citizens who do not wish their children to have a complete course of secondary instruction, and also the needs of a small number of scholars who desire to enter college.

OPINION OF DR. HARRIS.

But if American pedagogues do not sufficiently apprehend the vices of the general organization of their secondary instruction, which is, so to say, composite and derived from different sources, and consequently wanting in order and unity, they do not hesitate to declare themselves on other points of their inferiority. The proof is that the question of the reform of secondary instruction has become more than any other the order of the day. In 1892 a committee was appointed under the auspices of the National Educational Association to consider the improvements which might be introduced into the courses of study in the high schools and academies. This committee published a long report, of which Dr. Harris declared that it was the most important pedagogical document ever published in the United States. In his letter of introduction to this report Dr. Harris says that it is admitted by all that the most defective part of education in the United States is that which is given in secondary schools. He points out the discrepancies which exist in the regulations, plans of study, selection of subjects, and the different importance which is attached to the latter in different institutions. He speaks of the uncertainty of opinion upon the definition of secondary instruction and the unfortunate consequences which have followed this state of confusion, both on the part of the clementary schools, which can not tell on what condition their pupils will be admitted