The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-08-09
THE RIGHT ORDER OF EDUCATION.

Ex-Governor Cox, of Ohio, is gentleman
of much more than ordinary cultivation OF
mind, and possesses notable skill in the use
of language. He is too philosophical as his
political experience has proved, to be fitted
for Radical politician; yet his philosophy is
| hardly deem enonoh e. IL L~ia enterprise
which he recently undertook in an address
before the Alumni of 0terlin College, of
refuting the principles laid down by Herbert
Spencer for determining the curriculum of an
education. Spencer claims to have ascertained
these principles by finding adequate answers
to these two questions "What knowledge
is of most worth? what is the end by which
the relative value of knowledge should be
judged?" His answer to the second and
supreme question is, "to live completely. "
Then, in order to get at the answer to the
other question, he thus Classics and CO.
ordinates the elements which make up a
complete life"
1. Those activities which directly minister
to self-preseryation. 2. Those activities
which, by securing the necessaries of life, in
directly minister to self-preservation. 8.
Those activities which have for their aim the
rearing and discipline of offspring. 4. Those
activities which are involved in the main
tenance ofproper social and political relations.
5. Those micellaneous activities which make
up the leisure part of life, devoted to the
qualification of the tastes and feelings.
And, hereupon, he argues that, inasmuch
as each subsequent class of activities is made
possible only by the existence of each pre-
ceding class, knowledge should be valued
according to a similar subordination, and any
education which fails to meet the wants of the
several divisions of life, in the order in which
they are above classified, must be radically
and fatally defective. This conclusion, saws
Ex-Governor Cox, seems to me to be one
which is at variance with true idea of educa-
ton )" and he contends, in long disquisition
on the comparative worth and beauty of the
Municipalities and the spiritualities of human
existence, that the true criterion of the rela-
tive value of knowledge, and the true source
OF the principles which should determine the
curriculum of an education, are to be found
IN some high, but by him not explicitly de-
fined ideal. He thinks that he has indicated
a fatal objection to Herbert Spencers method
when he says: Whatever be our philosophical
theories, we must admit the fact to be that
the Ideal in morals, in intellect ard in art is so
related tc our faculties that our approval of it
and our pleasure in it are inevitable, and that
from the time of our perceiving and compre-
hendlng it, it somehow becomes &c Us a law
governing our judgment of ourselves; and we
approve or condemn our own conduct, our in
intellectual culture and our taste, as these
harmonize or are iiscordant with this standard
which reason sets up within u.s."
Ex-Governor Cox profoundly mistakes.
however, in supposing that Herbert Spencer's
method is irreconclable with the greatest
possible approximation to the highest con-
eeivable ideal of human existence. The full |
illment of this method, indeed, is the indis- |
oensable condition to the conception of high |
deal or to considerable progress in actively
staining to it. 1t is well to remark that
very ideal Is not high, and that the lowest
are capable of mentally shaping
nd actively aspiring to some ideal. And one
f the fatal mistakes to which low intelli-
ence is prone, is to go at a single bound to
De realization of its ideal, whatever that
Lay be, passing over all intervening requisites