Another effect of Christianity was that of promoting philanthropic sentiments among mankind. Among other results, it had an important bearing on slavery. In legislation some important measures were passed, but it is not in the field of legislation we must look for the influence of Christianity upon slavery. Christianity did not prohibit, but distinctly recognized slavery, and labored to encourage habits of docility and passive obedience, not only in the slave but also in other classes of the community; in the monk especially, these qualities were demanded. But much was said by the Fathers about the natural equality of men, the duty of regarding slaves as brothers, of the heinousness of cruelty to them; this had been also said with equal force, though the doctrine was not so extensively spread, by the Stoics, by Seneca and Epictetus, and the principal of the original freedom of all men was repeatedly averred by the pagan lawyers. The services of Christianity in this sphere were of three kinds: It supplied a new order of relations, in which the distinctions of classes were unknown; it imparted a moral dignity to the servile classes, and gave an unexampled impetus to the movement of enfranchisement, but on this latter point the movement was also prepared for by many other causes, so impossible is it in history ever to draw hard and fast lines; there is always a gradual preparation for higher teaching, and this higher teaching is often perverted when vast numbers of men become disciples, who are not yet sufficiently advanced to understand its true significance.

I fear this truth is still very imperfectly apprehended; it is one of the latest fruits of Christianity; even now there are comparatively few writers who have drunk deeply enough of the spirit of reverence and love to be faithful interpreters of the past. Love and reverence alone hold the keys to the secrets of human life as well as of nature. To the unloving all things wrap themselves in a harsh, repeliant garb; they wear an impenetrable mask. We need faith in God to see that He has never left Himself without witness that He has ever been caring for His creatures, leading them step by step to juster views, nobler and loftier ideals, and that what is called the idolatry of the ancients, and regarded as faithful inventions was, as Max Müller and others have shown, the baby-language of the world, its first attempts to give a meaning to what it saw and heard, to express its first conceptions of the things around it, it was appropriate to the age of the world, just as the talk and ways of children are to their age; they only appear absurd when this is not realized. When we unconsciously carry back the educated feeling, knowledge, and culture of the present, and regarding those who were in truth world-children, as men blame them for not thinking and acting as men. Taking this point of view, we

shall be able to appreciate the blessings Christianity conferred on mankind without detracting from the culture which had enabled man to receive it, and also be able to account for the deterioration, doctrines underwent as soon as they were embraced by large multitudes, without ascribing these perversions to the essentials of Christianity The two ways in which Christianity exercised such a powerful influence mankind over were: first, that in the religious services which so deeply affected the minds of men, sanctifying as they did both the joys and sorrows of life, the difference between slave and master was unknown; the second was its honoring those virtues which could be equally well cultivated by the slave as by any other member of the State, while those virtues that had previously been honored, such as self-reliance, magnanimity, dignity, independence, were virtues which it would have been almost impossible for the slave to cultivate. Having now examined, as far as space will allow, the change wrought by Christianity in the moral standard, and seen how some of the virtues which may be regarded as specially Christian had begun to be cultivated, though in an inferior degree, we must now seek to explain the cause of this,-it was the personal influence which was so powerful in Christianity. Although some of the previous philosophical sects may have exhorted their disciples to set up some ideal personage as an example, we all know that any such influence is very different to that of a living friend which Christ is to all Christians. One who not only possessed all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge so that the wise and learned could drink of His spirit, and, being refreshed themselves, tell the secret to others, write books which should bring sunshine and calm to weary hearts and open to the sons of toil bright regions of thought-life, but who Himself stooped to comfort the lowliest, to comfort the most degraded, who took little children in His arms and awoke the loving reverence alike of wise and foolish, rich and poor. This it is the beauty of a character at once real and ideal that not only at first gave such a powerful impulse to Christianity, but which has been a constant source of renovation whenever errors and superstitions crept in and sullied the purity of its doctrinal teaching.. As in the fable of old the falling to the earth renewed the life that was failing, so with Christianity when, wounded and faint, it has fallen back of the crucified. it has renewed its life, and risen up with added powers of growth to struggle again and again with evil, and growing stronger each time, the springs of life have thus been reached; and we may feel assured it will yet wear the crown of a noble manhood and its offspring be truly "sons of God."

THE NATURE OF MIND.

BY J. M. LONG.

A true conception of the nature of mind lies at the foundation of a true science of psychology and of education. The material upon which the teacher works is mind. To develop mind into a harmonious and vigorous activity of all its powers, the teacher must understand the nature of the mental structure, and the laws and conditions of its healthful activity. Through the ignorance of teachers there are more cases of mal-treatment in the psychological than in the physiological world. If we could have as sensible perception of mind as we have of the bodily organism, we should see many mental monstrosities, half-formed minds,-minds unsymmetrical, sent out into the breathing world.

What, then, is the fundamental conception of mind which should guide the teacher in the work of education? In seeking an answer to this question we will first notice, briefly, certain crude and empiric ideas which have gained currency.

1. Mind has sometimes been compared to a piece of marble to be carved into form and symmetry. The prominent idea in this figure is the plasticity of mind and its capability of yielding to the disciplinary power of educational training. This idea makes prominent the influence of the teacher in forming and shaping the mind of the pupil, but leaves out of view the more important internal factor of self-activity which is the main element in all true education.

2. Again, the mind has been compared to a substance to be impressed like wax. The prominent idea here is the cultivation of the memory. But the figure is greatly defective from the fact that this impressibility is determined by the internal spontaneity of the mind, and not by external force. Mind, in its essential nature, is not passive receptivity, but responsive receptivity.

3. The mind, by a certain school of mental philosophers, has been called a tabula rasa, like a piece of blank paper on which one thing may be written as well as another. This was the view of Locke, who was so intensely opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas. This view of mind had its origin in the doctrine that the soul is wholly dependant on the external world for its ideas and impressions. But the metaphor is greatly defective from the fact that it leaves out of view those innate forms of thought and tendencies of the mind to take on

itself a particular development, just as the physical organism tends to grow into the ancestral type of the race. It is not correct to say the mind has innate ideas, but it does possess innate tendencies, aptitudes, or organic predispositions which are the common heritage of the human race. These innate forms of thought are commonly called

intuitions.

4. The mind of the young learner has also been compared to a vessel to be filled. The prominent idea is the acquisition of knowledge. Such an illustration makes mind a mere passive receptacle to be filled. The children in a school are viewed as so many vessels; some larger, some smaller, all sitting in rows to be filled with that sweet and delicious something, called knowledge.

All these illustrations as to the nature of mind are at best but crude metaphors which, while they suggest some important aspect of mind, are calculated to mislead the teacher in the difficult work of training and developing the faculties of the soul.

In order to find a philosophic basis for psychology and education, we must find the fundamental category of mind,-the genus to which it, as a species, belongs. This fundamental idea, whatever it may be, will serve as the central organizing principle in the science of education. From this fundamental principle all the empiric principles of teaching which constitute its methodology can be logically deduced. This fundamental principle will also bring the science of education into true organic unity with its kindred sciences by exhib iting its logical relations and affinities. As the organism of knowledge unfolds into higher phases of development, all the different sciences tend to assume toward one another a closer logical unity. For a time biology, or the science of life, remained in an isolated and unprogressive state. But it is now making progress, and rising into the definiteness of a science by allying itself with the sciences below it, and by adopting their concepts and methods of investigation. In like manner, sociology, the science of human society, is now making rapid progress by adopting the ideas and methods of the organic sphere. In view of this organic unity existing among the sciences it becomes necessary that any branch of knowledge claiming the rank of a science should define its position in the organism of knowledge by showing its relation to other branches in this organism and what ideas and data it derives from them. Now, since the science of education must be based o a true philosophy of mind, it follows that the fundamental truth which must be the organizing principle in Paideutics, or the science of education, will be the true and essential nature of mind. This must be a comprehensive cate

gory of thought. Without such a category education cannot attain to the rank of a science. Astronomy did not attain to the clearness and precision of a science until it found an organizing principle by expanding the idea of terrestrial gravity into the larger idea of universal gravitation. We have another striking illustration of the importance of general ideas in science in the inclusion of light, heat, and electricity within the category of undulatory or rhythmical motion as furnished by aëriform phenomena. At first thought no two things would seem more unlike than acoustics and optics, the science of sound, and the science of light. But modern science penetrating into the essential nature of these two classes of phenomena has proved that they are due to one and the same fundamental form of motion. In like manner, what can seem more unlike to the senses than optics and thermotics,—a sensation of light and a sensation of heat? But science, by a further expansion of the category of rhythmical motion has brought within it the phenomena of heat. And now molecular physics has united under the category of rhythmical or vibratory motion, the phenomena of sound, light, heat, and electricity, which, taken together, we may term rhythmotics.

Heeding these suggestions with regard to the nature of the law which obtains in the development of all the sciences, we set out to find the true category of mental phenomena. We, in the first place, call in the aid of consciousness. Doing this, we are assured by an intuition or dictum of consciousness that the most simple and ultimate conception which we can form of mind is that of a force, The mind is conscious of itself only when acting, as perceiving, remembering, or willing; but to be conscious of itself while acting is to know itself as a force in energy. Hence, Hamilton says, "I know myself as a force in energy; the not-self as a counter force in energy." This idea of mind as a force is not an inferred idea derived by a discursive process of thought, but is a fundamental idea of intuition. We must, then, conceive of mind as a force endowed with innate and spontaneous energy. But, as Hamilton has said, we can know mind as a force only by placing it in antithesis to external phenomena as counter-forces. "Perception," says Martineau, "cannot befall us by mere exposure to what may be delivered upon us from without. It is not the same as reception. It is not realized in a creature,-say an oyster,-that lies flat and has sensations. Neither could it arise from the exercise of an unobstructive activity, spontaneously developing itself in vacuo."

But mind is not only a force, but also a conscious force, which is self-moved, self-determined, and which acts according to an intelli