THE NEW METHOD IN FRANCE.
As the French National Scientific Association, in their meeting at Grenoble, two years ago, recognized in their most startling form the phenomena of human impressibility which are illustrated in the “Manual of Psychometry,” and reported the most marvellous experiments in medicines,—an act of liberality which has no parallel in English-speaking nations,—so at the late meeting of their Scientific Congress, as I learn from the German magazine, the Sphinx, the new principle of education was broached which I feared to present in the “New Education,” and was received with general approbation by that learned body.
Of course there was not a complete presentation of the subject, for that would require a complete knowledge of the brain, which no scientific association claims at present, and which will have its first presentation to the readers of the Journal of Man, but the process of educational development was studied by the French savants from the standpoint of mesmeric science and its leading methods, which are now (freed from the name of an individual) styled hypnotism; or, the sleep-producing process.
In that passive and impressionable condition which is called hypnotic, mesmeric, somnambulic, or somniloquent, it has long been known that the subject may be absolutely controlled by the operator, or by a simple command or suggestion, or by his own imagination. This has been so often demonstrated before many hundred thousands of spectators, that it is a matter of general knowledge everywhere among intelligent people,—everywhere except, perhaps, in the thick darkness of medical colleges, where ignorance upon such subjects has long been made the criterion of respectability, and perhaps among a few very orthodox congregations, where such things have been associated with the idea of witchcraft, and considered very offensive to the Lord. Such was the doctrine of my old contemporary at Cincinnati, Dr. Wilson, at the head of the leading orthodox congregation; and it was equally offensive to the champion debater of Presbyterian orthodoxy, the Rev. N. L. Rice, whom I arraigned before a vast audience for his antiquated falsehoods. If the church and the college are getting a little more enlightened now, I cannot forget the condition in which I found them, of stubborn hostility to scientific progress, and these things should not be forgotten until they have repented, reformed, and ceased to be a stationary obstruction.
We are not accustomed to look to a Catholic country like France for advanced thought, yet, in these instances just mentioned, we find French scientists entertaining advanced ideas which the leaders of American science treat with either indifference or hostility. The Popular Science Monthly and medical journals generally treat all such matters with stubborn aversion and injustice. The learned collaborators of Johnson’s Cyclopedia were unwilling even to have the science of psychometry mentioned in it, and it was introduced by the publisher against their protest. These things I mention now, that the great public to which I appeal may better understand the real value of the opinions of those who stand in positions of authority and influence.
I would not wish to diminish by harsh criticism the sentiment of reverence which is already too feeble in the American mind. We cannot be too reverent to real intellectual and moral greatness, but to reverence beyond their worth the teachers of old inherited falsehoods, is to be a traitor to truth. The literature of to-day is controlled by ancient or mediæval errors, and the fresh science seeking expression in the Journal of Man could not have found expression in periodical literature. Our leading periodicals would not have opened their pages to the exposition of educational methods which is to be given in this essay. Intolerance is the inheritance which the generation of to-day has received from ancestors who two or three centuries ago delighted in hanging or even burning the exponents of opinions contrary to their own; and where intolerance is not in the way, the energy of literary cliques is exerted to hold exclusive possession of the field.
With this exordium, which the occasion seemed to require, let us proceed to consider the most powerful and radical measure, which belongs to the science of education, and which has been developed by the science of anthropology.