Three Absurdities of Certain Modern Theories of Education [pp. 265-292]

Absurdities of Modern Education.
Him, who is the Father of Lights, and who revealeth these
things to babes. For ever blessed be God for his written word.
It is indeed a light shining in a dark place.
Socrates was hardly dead till the Athenians repented of that
injustice, which had deprived their city of so great a man.
They closed all the palaestra and gymnasia. They condemned
Melitus to death, and banished his other accusers. They are
even said to have erected a bronze statue to the honour of So crates. This would not reprove their vices. So fickle is popular opinion of merit and demerit. But we must come to an
end.
ART. IV.-Three Absurdities of certain Modern Theories oy
.Education.
ETYMOLOGICALLY regarded the words synthesis and analysis
may be said to define themselves. The one is a separation, a
taking apart, the other a putting, or binding together. And
yet, like other terms, which are the converse of each other, they
may be and often are, both mentally and practically interchanged. What is synthesis, when viewed under one aspect, is
analysis when regarded under another. What is analysis practically, becomes synthesis theoretically. What is analysis
chronologically, or in the order of time, becomes synthesis logically, or in the order of ideas. The process from particulars to
universals experimentally, is often the index of just the reverse
proceeding in the operations of the mind. For example, the
analysis of water outwardly, into the elements oxygen and
hydrogen, may be the mere proof of the assumed mental synthesis. Again, they necessarily imply each other. Every true
view of a whole, as a whole, implies some scientific consideration of parts, regarded as parts of that assumed whole; and
every scientific examination of parts, as parts, implies some consideration of a whole, as the whole of which they are parts. In
other words, not only does every true theory imply some induction, but every sound induction implies some a priorir view (a
priori we mean in respect to this particular induction) to make
VOL. XXIII.-NO. II. 23
1851.]
265