exposition, he saves his hearers from study and thinking; the more thorough and masterly his treatment, the more completely he removes from the student the incentive to independent thinking. Such a system of teaching is ingeniously devised to prevent a young man from getting a real education, and yet lead him to believe the contrary. It is a brilliant plan for developing power in the instructor, and false conceit in the student. When the latter has been separated from his thinking-guide, new facts, new arguments, find him unprotected, and there result strange reversals of opinion and belief.

There is another method of teaching, in which the lecturer is no longer the main source of information and belief for the student. To distinguish it from the others, I may call it, in default of a better name, the laboratory method. As its name implies, it requires a collection of documents, materials, and treatises wherein the student can take his sources at first hand; and this workshop with its materials is to the economist what the. laboratory with its appliances is to the chemist or biologist. The purpose of study is not the absorption of a given author, but the understanding of a subject through many sources and many authors. Instructed to report upon a given topic, the student is obliged to learn methods of work and study of far greater importance than any acquired information; he learns how to use books, and he learns to weigh and discriminate between statements. Instead of accepting a carefully prepared exposition by the lecturer, with its logic and its resulting conclusions fully worked out, he is taught how to prepare the data, to exercise himself in the application of principles, and to draw his own conclusions. Instead of having the ground covered for him in a masterly way by the instructor, he is obliged to cover it himself, to learn by his own mistakes, and to gather experience from the fate of his own perform

ances under the most rigorous criticism. The purpose of such a system is the acquisition of independent power and methods of work, rather than any specific beliefs. Indeed, the instructor may never know what the final beliefs of his student are. To the extent to which the laboratory method is used, the scientific spirit drives out prejudice and partisanship, and the instructor finds the time has gone by when it seemed proper to urge the acceptance of any specific beliefs.

If the instructor, then, granting the adoption of such a system, is called upon to lecture, as he often is, on some practical and descriptive subjects, like Railways or Tariffs, he is in effect only saving the student's time by collecting for him some of the materials which otherwise he must gather for himself, and upon which he will have to use his principles; while, on other topics, the student is at the same time fully occupied. Or the instructor presents his treatment of a subject as a model and stimulus. It becomes clear that the student and his instructor are doing field work together, and the former gains the best things from his superior with amazing rapidity. To see a thing well done before one's very eyes is sure to excite effort and bring out latent power. In this process, as in the "natural method" of teaching modern languages, the necessary accumulation of technical and useful information comes as a matter of course. So that while we can readily admit that the possession of mere learning is highly useful and desirable, yet we are saved from regarding industry and collation as the cardinal virtues, because we have set the chief value upon the higher mental processes, in which those like synthesis and the explanation of cause and effect play the principal rôle. The result of such a system is that the instructor is left free to put emphasis upon that which is of lasting value to the student. He can naturally urge a non-partisan, ju

dicial attitude of mind in weighing evidence and balancing arguments. His chief concern is in showing how to approach a subject, how to gather materials and use books, how to treat and analyze the results, to be orderly and logical, to preserve the homely virtue of common sense, and, not least, to demand that the conclusions be expressed in tolerable English.

In the natural sciences this laboratory method has long been familiar; and recently it has succeeded in working a veritable revolution in the teaching methods of American law schools. That which in economics I have called the laboratory method is in law the case system. This reference to what has been going on in the teaching of law has more than passing significance for the teaching of economics, because the mental processes required in the study of law are strikingly like those required in the study of economics. The student of law is obliged to discover the pivotal point in a case, grasp clearly a general principle of law, and apply the relevant principle to the point at issue. The power to assimilate principles and apply them to facts of some complexity with accuracy and logic makes the successful jurist. Similarly, as we have seen, the power to grasp a general principle, to weigh facts, and to apply principles logically to particular cases makes the successful economist. In short, the training in economics is largely the same as the training in law. A student of economics, however loaded his mind may be with information, if untrained in the power to trace the operation of cause and effect in his facts, is distinctly not an economist. On the other hand, he is just as distinctly not a jurist, who has gathered all the facts material to his client's case, if he is untrained in applying the principles of law governing legal contests.

The similarity, consequently, between economics and law gives a peculiar interest to the parallel development which

is even now going on in the methods of teaching these two subjects. The case system has already an established place in the leading schools of law; its purpose is to train, not merely to inform; and by a study of numerous cases under given branches of law, students are forced to acquire relevancy, and to practice themselves in applying precedents to facts under the fire of galling criticism. It has a different aim from the old system, in which the lecturer, usually a successful practitioner, told the student what the law was. Not content with merely instructing him as to existing law, the new system sends out a man with a seasoned mind, ready to apply principles in sudden emergencies in the court-room. In law as in economics, the laboratory system is driving out the textbook and the lec

ture.

To crowd the mind of an economic student with information is by far the easiest method for the instructor; in this way he may give the raw young student arms and ammunition with which to take the field at once, and externally he looks like a soldier. But the laboratory method produces men of a different fibre. It is not sufficient to throw a uniform over a new recruit and thrust a musket into his hand, to make him a soldier; on the contrary, it requires a seasoning of body and nerve and will by years of training, to create the kind of soldier who marched from the Rhine through Gravelotte and Sedan to Paris. So, likewise, long and careful training is needed for the economist, in order that he may deal with his subject independently, freshly, and with individuality; that he may be prepared not only to deal adequately with a single issue, a special phase of the tariff, or taxation, or socialism, but to think and reason correctly and all the forms into which the various issues may shape themselves.

on any

From the basis of the newer and better methods thus explained and illus trated, many corollaries may be drawn

by the reader himself; and the practical teacher will see many. I shall take space here to notice only a very few, quite briefly. One of vital importance concerns the order of teaching the introductory work in economics. From the modern point of view, it must be regarded as a high crime and misdemeanor to set mere information above training and power. And yet it has not infrequently happened that an instructor has precipitated a new student into economic history and the history of the development of economic thought before he was in the least familiar with the principles which explain the relations of economic phenomena. The effects upon the student are evil and lasting, and just what might be expected. Such a man is like a door without a latch; it flies open at the pressure of every passing breeze. This kind of door is worse than no door; it is an annoyance to the ear. It is criminal pedagogics to plunge the student into complicated facts before he has become familiar with methods of reasoning on the primary principles of his science. A process of this nature, moreover, wastes time. If given the proper preliminary training, on the other hand, he will enter upon the descriptive courses, or upon the more exacting and later work of research, with intelligence and facility.

Since a characteristic of the later methods is the study of a subject rather than of an author, we are likely to see less imitation of German forms of organizing departments of economics. In the past, with a proper regard for the influence of a great spirit, a distinguished master was appointed to lecture at will. There are evident gains in giving a great personality free play, but the progress of the subject may suffer. The subject will gain by a just subdivision of the field and a corresponding division of labor. No one man can pretend to cover the whole field of economics; indeed, there are numerous sections, to

one of which a man may well give his great abilities and training, and then with humility admit that he cannot be familiar with all parts of it. Hence, a division of departments into subjects, each being given its relative weight and attention, leads to the selection of men for each subject, to work in common for an organized whole. In this way the student meets with intensity of effort in each branch of economics, and obtains greater insight into the problems of each division of it. Such organization, moreover, with a less number of geniuses, may with more effectiveness train students throughout the whole field, and save no little duplication of work and waste of power among instructors. Certainly, there does not exist in German universities to-day an organized system of training men to become economists equal to that of the best American universities. And it is still more true that our system is not equaled in France; while England gives little chance for graduate work.

Such phenomenal development in America in a subject scarcely twenty-five years old is worth noting, and could not have come about without a proper understanding of its value on the part of those who have furnished the material equipment to our institutions of learning. The laboratory method, like most good things, is expensive. The student must have free access to a large and carefully arranged library, especially rich in all records of legislation, statistics, reports, and the like for each country in the world. Such a system, of course, means a large and generous expenditure. But this new need should cause no surprise, because no greater demands are made in behalf of economic science than are justly accepted as proper for biological and physical laboratories. In both cases the end is the same: the development of eager, independent research on subjects intimately and directly affecting the welfare of the human race.

The work of research, however brilliant, is, in a way, of no greater importance to the good of our nation than that elementary teaching of economics to the great masses who never enter a college, but who form the majority of those who enter a polling-booth. In what has been said above, this elementary instruction has been found to be affected by the

same characteristics which are common to it as well as to the advanced work. To the reader it will be left to determine where the tar water of my discussion leaves off, and where the Trinity begins. It may possibly result, as was finally held by Bishop Berkeley's critics, that the discussion of tar water was more important than that of the Trinity. J. Laurence Laughlin.

READERS of Old Mortality will perhaps remember that when Graham of Claverhouse escorts Henry Morton as a prisoner to Edinburgh, he asks that estimable and unfortunate young non-conformist if he has ever read Froissart. Morton, who was probably the last man in Scotland to derive any gratification from the Chronicles, answers that he has not. "I have half a mind to contrive you should have six months' imprisonment," says the undaunted Claverhouse, "in order to procure you that pleasure. His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love! Ah, benedicite! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favor or on the other! But truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvelous little sympathy."

I should like, out of my affection for the Chronicles, to feel that Sir Walter overstated the case, when he put these

cheerful words into the mouth of Dundee; but it is vain to deny that Froissart, living in a darkened age, was as indifferent to the fate of the rank and file as if he had been a great nineteenthcentury general. To be sure, the rank and file were then counted by the hundreds rather than by the thousands, and it took years of continuous warfare to kill as many soldiers as perished in one of our modern battles. Moreover, the illuminating truth that Jack is as good as his master by help of which we all live now in such striking brotherhood and amity—had not then dawned upon a proud and prejudiced world. Fighting was the grand business of life, and that Jack did not fight as well as his master was a fact equally apparent to those who made history and to those who wrote it. If the English archers, the French men-at-arms, and the Breton lances could be trusted to stand the shock of battle, the "lusty varlets," who formed the bulk of every army, were sure to run away; and the "commonalty" were always ready to open their gates and deliver up their towns to every fresh new-comer. When Philip of Navarre was entreated to visit Paris, then in a state of tumult and rebellion, and was assured that the merchants and the mob held him in equal affection, he resolutely declined their importunities,

concluding that to put his faith in princes was, on the whole, less dangerous than to confide it in the people. "In commonalties," observed this astute veteran, "there is neither dependence nor union, save in the destruction of all things good." "What can a baseborn man know of honor?" asks Froissart coldly. "His sole wish is to enrich himself. He is like the otter, which, entering a pond, devours all the fish therein."

Now, if history, as Professor Seeley teaches us, should begin with a maxim and end with a moral, here are maxims and morals in abundance, albeit they may have lost their flavor for an altruis

tic age. For no one of the sister Muses has lent herself so unreservedly to the demands of an exacting generation as Clio, who, shorn of her splendor, sits spectacled before a dusty table strewn with Acts of Parliament and Acts of Congress, and forgets the glories of the past in the absorbing study of constitutions. She traces painfully the successive steps by which the sovereign power has passed from the king to the nobles, from the nobles to the nation, and from the nation to the mob, and asks herself interesting but fruitless questions as to what is coming next. She has been divorced from literature," mere literature," as Professor Seeley contemptuously phrases it, and wedded to science, that grim but amorous lord whose harem is tolerably full already, but who lusts perpetually for another bride. If, like Briseis, she looks backward wistfully, she is at once reminded that it is no part of her present duty to furnish recreation to grateful and happy readers, but that her business lies in drawing conclusions from facts already established, and providing a saddened world with wise speculations on political science, based upon historic certainties. Her safest lessons, Professor Seeley tells her warningly, are conveyed in "Blue Books and other statistics," with which, indeed, no living NO. 463

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man can hope to recreate himself; and her essential outgrowths are "political philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political economy, and international law," a witches' brew with which few living men would care to meddle. It is even part of his severe discipline to strip her of the fair words and glittering sentences with which her suitors have sought for centuries to enhance her charms, and "for the beauty of drapery to substitute the beauty of the nude figure." Poor shivering Muse, with whom Shakespeare once dallied, and of whom great Homer sang! Never again shall she be permitted to inspire the genius that enthralls the world. Never again shall "mere literature " carry her name and fame into the remotest corners of the globe. She who once told us in sonorous sentences "how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted," is now sent into studious retirement, denied the adornments of style, forbidden the companionship of heroes, and requested to occupy herself industriously with Blue Books and the growth of constitutions. I know nothing more significant than Professor Seeley's warning to modern historians not to resemble Tacitus, of which there seems but little danger, unless, indeed, it be the complacency with which a patriotic and very popular American critic congratulates himself and us on the felicity of having plenty of young poets of our own, who do not in the least resemble Wordsworth, or Shelley, or Keats.

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Yet when we take from history all that gives it color, vivacity, and charm, we lose, perchance, more than our mere enjoyment, though that be a heavy forfeiture, more than the pleasant hours spent in the storied past. Even so stern a master as Mr. Lecky is fain to admit that these obsolete narratives, which once called themselves histories, "gave in sight into human character, breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimu