their countrymen what a lame individuality would result if the knowledge of one's national history were missing, or if one possessed only such a knowledge of it as could be obtained by hearing the anecdotes of idle men; for we must remember that oral information comes mostly from idle people. Those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest undertakings do not have leisure to recount to their fellow-workers any systematic view of the fragment of history in which they have personally borne a part.

If the school teaches all the children of the community the good habits of regularity and punctuality it does so much toward enabling each pupil to work in the social combinations that exist in every civilized community. It gives him some power himself to direct these combinations. Directive power is a higher manifestation of individuality than that which simply obeys direction from a leader. The school habit of silence, the repression of one's tendency to prate and chatter, is another element of directive power, quite important. The ability to dig out one's lesson from the printed page and to learn to be critical and exacting in sifting the statements of others is also another service which the school contributes to the development of the individuality of the child. One kind or method of attention is developed in the school by requiring the child to study the text of the book by himself and master its contents without aid from teacher or fellow-pupil. The child learns to look below the surface and to seize the principle involved. He learns to overcome by patient and continued industry difficulties which at first seemed altogether insurmountable. The other kind of attention is that cultivated in the class exercises or recitations. All of the pupils concentrate their attention on the statements of the pupil who is reciting and on the cross-questioning of the teacher. It is a dialectic which calls for alertness and versatility of mind in the pupils who take part in it. But this kind of attention is not a substitute for the other one just mentioned. It gives one self-possession in the presence of difficult and unexpected emergencies, but it is not a substitute for the patient industry which absorbs itself in a study of the object and its causal relations.

The studies of the school, on the one hand, develop a knowledge of nature and arm the mind of the pupil with the experience of those who have conquered or are conquering nature. On the other hand, the school studies relate to human character and arm the pupil with a knowledge of human nature. Of the latter character are all of the fine literary selections in the school-readers. Each one of them gives a glimpse of human nature, which relates to what is generally sub-conscious-below the threshold of consciousness in the ordinary person's mind. The poet or literary man has succeeded in giving a worthy and elaborate expression to some one or more phases of human experience and thereby is making a conscious expression of this forever the possession of his fellow-men.

One will admit that there is a metaphysical catch involved in this com plaint against the school that it has the effect of obliterating the native individuality of the child. The history of the United States shows that persons who go out to the frontier as pioneers prove themselves to be full of resources in the way of subduing the wilderness and converting it to human uses, destroying wild beasts, defeating the Indians and banditti, and in like adventures. This would be called individualism by most people, but it is a very small part of individualism. The individualism which one wishes to cultivate in urban society fits one to become self-directive among his fellowmen, and not merely to be effective against wild nature at first hand. In order to hold one's own in the midst of the urban or industrial civilization it is necessary to have a knowledge of human nature and a knowledge of the motives and purposes of one's fellow-men-yes, and of the essential aims of the civilization in which one lives. It should enable one to select his vocation intelligently and make a success of it in a competitive civilization.

The one with small individuality takes his initiative from others and does not strike out for himself. He is dragged or pushed along, and does not contribute his quota of directive power to the community. This second kind of individuality, which can hold its own in an urban civilization, is scarcely considered by most of those who talk or write on the development of individuality, and the very best training of this kind of individuality— namely, that in our large schools- is therefore popularly supposed to have the effect of obliterating individuality. This same kind of individuality is the most important of all individuality--it is civilized individuality. The development of this higher order of individuality can take two directions. First, that of resistance to the influence or demands of the social whole. This development of the individual makes him disobedient at school and a criminal in society, and converts his career into a zero by uniting against him the organized forces of the community.

Secondly, the development of the individuality may take the normal direction of mastering the motives and purposes of the social whole and growing into a leader of some one of its manifold interests. This lies in the direction of attaining skill in a chosen industry and in attaining thru letters a knowledge of science and philosophy, which are social aggregates of observation and reflection; a knowledge of history, which shows the nature and behavior of social organizations, especially of the state and church and civil society; an acquaintance with literature, which reveals the depths of emotion and feeling and shows how feelings become conscious thoughts and actions, literature in this respect being the study, par excellence, for giving a knowledge of human nature. Besides this, the pupil needs a training in the control of his individualism for purposes of intelligent co-operation with others, and he gets this in a large school better than in a small school, and he gets it in a school far better than with a private tutor or by himself in the family.

Dr. Thwing, who has written so much and so well on the higher education, has shown by the statistics of men distinguished for letters and science and in the practical fields of activity, that the college graduate is two hundred times as apt to become distinguished as the rest of society— his chances of originality and for the cultivation of a higher order of individuality that can leave the beaten path and accomplish something that earns him the gratitude of his fellow-men are two hundred times those of the ordinary man who has not received a higher education.

Whatever gives to the mind a larger view increases individuality; whatever gives to the youth the power of self-control and of inhibiting his impulses and whims for the sake of combination with his fellows increases his higher order of individuality and makes him a more worthy citizen, and in doing these things the common-school system is performing its greatest work.

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ENGLISH SPELLING

A PRESENT DUTY

CHARLES PAYSON GURLEY SCOTT, ETYMOLOGICAL EDITOR OF THE CENTURY DICTIONARY," RADNOR, PA.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the National Educational

Association:

I have been invited to speak to you as a dictionary man, and particularly as an etymologist, an explorer and historian of words, upon the simplification of English spelling.

In the short time allotted to me I can do no more than to make some general statements and express some opinions. But I wish it to be understood that what I shall say concerning the treatment of English spelling is not merely my personal opinion, but represents, as I can prove, the general opinion, the solid judgment, of practically all the recognized scholars in English, in America and in England. You may ignore or forget my opinions, my utterances. It matters not. But, as teachers and writers, you cannot always ignore, you cannot always disregard, the deliberately formed and deliberately expressed opinions, the repeated advice, the serious appeals, of all qualified scholars, on a matter of so great importance in all teaching and writing as English spelling.

The simplification of English spelling is a duty. It is a present duty. It is especially a present duty of you; not of "all friends of progress," not of "the spirit of the age," not of any other vague abstraction, but of you; you, the members of the National Educational Association; you, the representative teachers of the United States; you, the chosen leaders, in state and nation, of the great army of teachers; you, the directors of the great American system of public schools; you, the presi

dents and professors of our great colleges and universities, the engineers of all the electric lines of learning. It is the present duty of you.

This is a bold statement, but it is true, and for this reason: that you, whom I thus address, are rational beings, reasonable creatures. That is another bold statement, perhaps, Mr. President, but I will risk it. I wish to placate the audience, and perhaps they will be reasonable enough to allow me a little pleasant exaggeration.

For this reason, then: that you are, in the main, rational beings. By your membership in the National Educational Association, by your profession as teachers, by your functions as national and state officers, by your acceptance of leadership in academic learning and instruction, by your manifested interest in the acquisition and spread of knowledge, you proclaim yourselves rational beings; and, being entitled to all the rights and privileges unto that degree appertaining, you must also accept all the responsibilities and duties of the same. The responsibilities are grave. The duties are numerous.

First among those duties is the duty of being rational, even about English spelling-one of the most irrational things in the world. As rational beings, you must look at English spelling and see what it is, and find out how it came to be so; and you must consider, in view of its present condition, what can be done, and ought to be done, to fit it better for its present and future uses. And you must do this, each of you, by yourself and for yourself. You must lay aside authority, and tradition, and prejudice, and apathy, and must look into the thing itself. Or else you are not rational; and you must be rational. We must all be rational. As teachers, as writers, we must use our minds, and think. It is uncomfortable, it is a trial, but we must do it.

What is meant by simplification of English spelling? It is spelling English words more simply, without useless letters or other dispensable irregularities. Simplified spelling is a form of amended spelling or improved spelling. It is in the direction of phonetic spelling, but it is not identical with phonetic spelling. It is a common mistake to confuse the two. No philologist proposes strict phonetic spelling for popular use. All philologists favor simplified spelling, in some form, on a phonetic basis.

The simplification of English spelling must be by regulation of the existing forms. That regulation implies a rule or standard. That rule or standard is to be found in the actual facts and prevailing customs and analogies of English spelling, and in the phonetic basis still therein. present, tho now partly obscured by the cherished accidents of time and the accepted mis-teaching of spelling-books.

The Roman alphabet is that phonetic basis. It can be easily adapted to a clear phonetic use and made a satisfactory phonetic standard of reference for the regulation of the ordinary spelling. The work has

been done. There is a general consent among scholars. have been laid down. They may be briefly stated.

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The principles

First, of course, the letters must have their Roman or European values. The consonants have nearly all the same values in all European forms of the Roman alphabet. Only c and z have been seriously distorted. But there is no doubt that c should be kept and used in its Roman power, as in Anglo-Saxon, namely, as k. It should not be set aside in favor of k. But the latter acquired values of c, namely, s, ts, tsh (ch), sh, are to be set aside as distorted and ambiguous uses. Kand x may stand, and non-ambiguous digraphs may be added. In spelling it is only the ambiguous that kills.

The vowels must have their Roman values, the same values, within narrow margins of variation, as they had in Anglo-Saxon, in Middle English, and as they still have, within like margins of variation, in the principal European languages of the present period. On this principle depends the whole alphabet. There can be no real simplification without it. Better, by far, the present spelling, than one based on the so-called "English" values.

The vowels must be called by the names which they had, and have, in Latin, which they had in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, which they had in early modern English, and which they still have in some English dialects; namely, â (ah), ê (ay), î (ee), ô (oh), û (oo), as in arm, eight, eel, old, ooze (rule). The fourth name (oh) has run a full circle of change, and is now right again in the ordinary use. The vowels must not be called by the recent altered forms of their names (ay, ee, eye, you), acquired under a blind conformity to the general run of phonetic change. We may continue to use this barbarous English rigmarole, “a, e, i, u” (ay, ee, eye, you), but we are not allowed as rational beings to approve it. We must not use this rigmarole as a phonetic standard or basis, in the conventional spelling-book style-a as in fate, è as in eve, i as in isle, ū as in use, etc, and then the same letters in what are imagined to be the corresponding short vowels, a as in at, e as in ell, i as in ill, u as in up, etc. That way madness lies. It is utterly wrong, unhistoric, unscientific, irrational, insane.

The only rational simplification lies in the regulation of the existing spelling upon the basis of the historic Roman alphabet, in its broad historic development. The Roman alphabet still lives.

Some may say "a simplification of English spelling is indeed desirable, but can it be effected ?" Yes. The English language has itself endured without mortal shock many successive simplifications of its spelling. If time permitted I could tell a long tale of such reforms, from Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English times down to the present day. I can mention only a few modern cases.

About the year 1630 English spelling was simplied by the general adoption of the regulation by which the two unmeaning variations of the