s engaged on the
"Economist," and five years later he began to write for the
quarterly reviews. Spencer's little book on Education dates from
1861, and has probably been more widely read than all his other
works put together, having been translated into almost all
civilised, and several primitive languages. It is generally
recognised as having effected the greatest educational reform of
the nineteenth century. It was certainly the most powerful of
single agents in effecting the liberation of girlhood from its
unnatural trammels. It placed the whole theory of education upon a
sound biological basis in the nature of the child and the natural
course of its evolution as a living creature. Spencer struck a
fatal blow at the morbid asceticism by proxy which adults used to
practice upon their children, and so great has been the influence
of his work for the amelioration of childhood that he is certainly
to be counted with the philanthropic on this ground. The first
chapter has no equal in literature in its splendidly sober praise
of natural knowledge. The wide knowledge which Spencer's writings
display of physical science, and his constant endeavor to
illustrate and support his system by connecting its position with
scientific facts and laws have given his philosophy great currency
among men of science--more so, indeed, than among philosophical
experts. Spencer died December 8, 1903.

_I.--What Knowledge is of Most Worth?_

It has been truly remarked that in order of time decoration precedes
dress, the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. It is curious
that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental, as among
bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Alike in
the Greek schools as in our own, this is the case. Men dress their
children's minds as they do their bodies in the prevailing fashion; and
in the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has
continued to predominate in an even greater degree among women than
among men. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like
historic trivialities are committed to memory, not because of any direct
benefit that can possibly result from knowing them, but because society
considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of others. Not what knowledge is of th