Home Office: Lexington, Ky. OFFICERS: T. C. H. VANCE, President, GEO. A. CHASE, Vice President, Tis company was recently incorporated by an act of the legislature of Kentucky and is endowed with liberal privileges and perpetual succession. The incorporators and members of the company are all teachers, and the members of the Advisory Board, consisting of one from each state, are educators of distinction. This is a New Plan of Insurance, organized chiefly for the benefit of Teachers, yet risks will be taken on all persons of sound body and mind. ANNUITY FOR DISABLED TEACHERS is a distinctive feature, by which, an annual sum is paid to those who become permanently disabled. A A policy of $1,000 costs but $10 a year; a policy of $2,000 costs but 820 a year; a policy of $3,000 costs but $30 a year, to persons under thirty-oue years of age. Premiums are paid monthly or annually at the pleasure of the insured. general agent is wanted for each state and local agents for every town and county in the United Saates. Teachers are preferred. None but those who can come well recommended need apply. Send for pamphlet giving full information, as to plan of insurance, cost, &c. Address, T. B. THRELKELD, Sec'y, THE MOST POPULAR PENS IN USE. and pronounced by all who used them to be For Sale by all Stationers ESTERBROOK STEEL PEN CO., Works, Camden, N. J. "the thing" to save the teachers's time and mind. In a neat box, $1 per set, post paid by return mail. A. C. MASON, Jacksonville, Illinois, New York. Prin. Eng. Training School. HAILED WITH DELIGHT A Fresh Book IN EDUCATIONAL CIRCLES. A New Arithmetic Containing Short, Simple, Practical and Scientific Methods of Calculation. A New Method of computation for every topic of Arithmetic, admitting of an Essay Analysis, and which is shorter, more simple, better and easier understood, and will soon supersede the methods now Valuable Hints in the solution of problems, showing how different classes can be solved in the easiest, shortest and best way and a valuable appendix of mathematical curiosities, puzzles, and queries. The work contains 194 pages, 12 mo, and will be sent on receipt of Price in Cloth, 60 cts; in Paper, 45 cts. Descriptive circulars and recommendations sent on application. in use. Address, J. F. LANING, New London, O., Author and Publisher. THE ECLECTIC TEACHER AND Southwestern Journal of Education. FOR TEACHERS AND FRIENDS OF EDUCATION. Vol. V. OCTOBER, 1880. A FREE STATE MUST EDUCATE THE PEOPLE. No. 2. FROM BY GEORGE W. F. PRICE, HUNTSVILLE, ALA. ROM time to time the friends of public education in the United States are called upon to renew again the fight in behalf of the thorough and adequate popular instruction of the masses. Notwithstanding the oft-repeated victories which have been won in the conflict for the dearest interests of the American people, the enemies of public enlightenment rally to the assault with a blind and obdurate valor worthy of a nobler cause. Had the struggle lain always between the wise and good men of the community, on the one hand, and the ignorant, misguided, or depraved, on the other, it is probable that a permanent truce would long since have been conquered. Unfortunately for this highest and worthiest object of national concern, the opposition to our free schools has often come from the educated and virtuous classes of society, from men of high station, eminent attainments, and unquestioned integrity. The antagonism has been founded upon a variety of considerations. Some have, honestly no doubt, questioned the moral results of a system which, of necessity, must avoid all dogmatic religious instruction. A few, perhaps, have been sincere in objecting to the social equality which the free school demands, at least in theory. Many have been honestly convinced, we must allow, that the state has no legitimate function to discharge in the attempt to educate the masses. Some have believed that enforced education, like other efforts at sumptuary legislation, would result in disaster to the intellect and to the morals of those whom the state took thus forcibly under its tutelary guardianship. While each of these classes has represented, at any one period, but a fraction of the entire population, yet the effect of their concurrent, if not preconcerted, opposition has been to retard very seriously the cause of popular education. We do not propose to enter the arena, to dispute with either of these parties the representative thesis which it propounds. We would rather hold up to the view of all our people the value to the individual of proper intellectual training, and the benefit accruing thus indirectly to the state from the education of its citizens. No one will be found to question, in the way of a general proposition, the statement that cultivated intellect has the advantage over ignorance and illiteracy. Few, however, have sufficiently considered to what a great extent success in every department of life is affected by the factor of education. We are not referring, of course, to the fields of professional activity alone, for to say that a man must be educated to succeed in such a sphere of labor, would be but stating a bald truism. We are alluding to the entire round of daily pursuits which engage the energies of men and women, and we affirm that success, even in the most ordinary avocations, is conditioned largely by mental training. It will startle some persons, perhaps, to be told that nine in ten of uneducated persons make utter failures in life. Yet this is so true that the most unreflecting mind will be convinced of its truthfulness by simple reference to daily observation and experience. We repeat it, to succeed even in the most ordinary channels of daily effort requires a combination of attributes and qualities of head and hand which must pre-suppose a certain degree of early mental discip line. It may not, and perhaps need not, of necessity come in the form of scholastic training. It may be that from native strength of faculty, and an innate aptitude for affairs, some men require only the stern discipline of poverty and early hardship to stimulate their energies, and to insure their success in the race of life. Such men thrive, like Alpine flowerets, upon a rugged and adverse soil, and under the chilling shadows of glaciers and snow-fields. They plant themselves, like mountain-pines, in the stormiest and most sterile spots, and all the storms of mighty and tempestuous seasons, and all the wrestlings of the howling blasts, serve but to strike deeper their gnarled roots and to lift higher their unwedgeable trunks. Yet certain it is that the average tree needs sunshine and dew and gentle rains and a soil of generous mould. Thus the ordinary human being requires for his equipment in life the cultivation of faculty which will give him energy, directness of purpose, orderly methods of business, punctual habits of application, and a reasonable grounding in the elements of learning. Now this is the outfit, and these are just the principles which children born in circumstances of poverty and want are apt to lack. Coming from the orders of social life, where narrow fortune and pinching penury are joined too often with habits of vicious living, the offspring of the improvident and thriftless are launched upon the world with evil predilections, untrained wills, rude manners, and gross ignorance. By generations of illiteracy they have acquired a hereditary inaptness for learning and culture which render their case hopeless indeed without the intervention of the state in their behalf. Yet from the ranks of the proletariat are drawn our voters, whose ballots decide the gravest questions of American politics. The failure to educate these children is the voluntary suicide of the state. Not merely upon the ground that the state must perpetuate itself, however, do we rest this argument, but because the work of modern government is largely that of culture of the masses. Ancient states were organized for conquest, and lived by war and rapine. Medieval society was based upon the might of the strongest, and not upon the right of the worthiest. But the function of moderr government is neither war, nor conquest, nor the exercise of arbitrary authority, but rather the nobler duty of educating and training humanity. In doing this office the state is amply repaid. Every educated citizen is a fresh element of power and efficiency. The acquisition of wealth is possible to the few in an oligarchy where the masses are unlettered. But the universal diffusion of material prosperity can consort alone with popular institutions, and is possible only through universal education. Here is a strong and impregnable ground upon which to advocate our free educational system. The logic is short, concise, irrefutable. We are a democratic people. Our institutions contemplate the equable distribution of property as the basis of individual contentment and national well-being. An ignorant populace can neither acquire wealth, nor could they hold it, were they dowered by fairy munificence with the instantaneous possession of boundless riches. To become beneficiaries of the values which they create, men must be educated and trained in an effective mental discipline. But the masses can never educate themselves, for the very excellent reasons that they have neither the inclination to seek learning nor the means to pay for adequate instruction. Upon the state, then, devolves this imperative duty of universal popular education, and upon a democratic government the obligation is more urgent, more inexorable, and more exacting than upon any other form of human institutions.-N. E. Journal of Education. A ANALYSIS AND TEACHING. NALYSIS is the methodical and complete resolution of any object of thought into its constituent parts or elements. It will therefore be seen that analysis bears a vital relation to the discovery of truth. Everywhere throughout the world of matter or of mind, truth first appears in manifold organic combinations. Everywhere, too, it presents first its surface manifesta tions. Science is defined as "classified knowledge." To the very existence of science analysis must be a sheer necessity. Whatever has been discovered by analysis, as fact or truth, must be clearly discriminated from whatever else, as similar to it or related, might be confounded with it. That is to say, there must be the proper defining of things, so that we may for each have a fixed rule by which it may be measured or readily determined. Without this no law of arrangement or classification is possible. This very defining is the work of analysis, for it is only as analysis, like the chisel of the sculptor, cuts away to the last grain the extraneous matter, that the idea of the discovered or dissevered fact or thing stands out, like the statue, in clear, well-defined, and immutable form. Analysis, then, in giving truth in defined shape, stands in the order of cause and effect, antecedence and sequence, affinity or juxtaposition. They must be methodiaclly arranged to constitute the same according to well-defined similarity either in nature or relation. This we term classification. But this is |