Abstract
SEVERAL articles on more and less scientific topics appear in the Contemporary. Mr. Herbert Spencer contributes the seventh of his series of articles on the development of professional institutions, the subject this month being the teacher. It is shown that the primitive conception of the teacher is the conception of one who gives instruction in sacred matters, so that the priest and teacher were identical. The priesthood is, for a long time, the sole source of knowledge, but in the course of evolution the teaching functions of the priest are shared by a non-priestly class, and thus the secular educator comes into existence. Mr. Spencer quotes, in support of this theory of development, extracts from the records of peoples, past and present, in various parts of the world. The evidence adduced goes to show “how teaching was in the beginning exclusively concerned with religious doctrines and rites, and how there eventually began to rise a teaching which, in some measure detached from the religious institutions, at the same time entered upon other subjects than the religious.” In some cases, the normal genesis of teachers from priests was interfered with, but that does not alter the general fact of such development. The differentiation of the teaching class from the priestly class is even now incomplete, for a large number of the private schools in our own kingdom are carried on by clergymen. Finally, as in other professions, segregation and consolidation into unions and associations have followed upon differentiation. M. Berthelot, the renowned chemist, lately appointed French Minister for Foreign Affairs, was a close friend of Renan. A few incidents referring to that friendship, and what Renan might have thought of the appointment, are given in the Contemporary by Mr. Albert D. Vandam. The same review contains the first instalment of an article on “Physics and Sociology,” by Mr. W. H. Mallock. The character of the article is sufficiently indicated by the following headings of the sections, (1) On the application to social phenomena of the methods and principles derived from physical science; (2) on the crucial difference between the subject-matter of physical science and that of social science, which render the method of study proper to the first inadequate when applied to the second; (3) on the deliberate rejection by contemporary sociologists of the methods by which, in social science, the methods of physical science must be supplemented; (4) on the nearness with which contemporary sociologists have approached the methods of study which they have nevertheless missed or rejected. The Contemporary also contains articles on the Secondary Education Report, by Prof. J. Massie; Mr. Balfour's philosophic writings, by Mr. Norman Hapgood; and a reply, by Prof. A. A. Bevan, to an article in which Prof. Sayce dealt with Biblical criticism from an archæological point of view.
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Science in the Magazines. Nature 53, 116–117 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053116a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053116a0