But, rightly understood, all that we have said in reference to the short-comings of our modes of educating the young, constitutes by no necessity any sort of disparagement of teachers, or of the conductors of our school system.  If a re-survey of the ground seems to show very much yet to be done, it is in part but the necessary result of an enlarging comprehension as to what, all the while, should have been done.  It is by looking from an eminence that we gain a broader prospect, and coincidently receive the conviction of a larger duty.  Much that we deplore in present methods is the best to which investigation has yet conducted us, or that the slow growth of a right view among the patrons of schools will allow.  Then, how hard it is to foresee, in any direction of effort, the effects our present appliances and plans shall be producing a score of years hence, or in the next generation—­hardest of all to those whose work is directly upon that extremely variable quantity, mind!  And in what other human business, besides that of education, are there not in like manner remissnesses and errors to point out?  Justice, in truth, requires the acknowledgment that probably no other body of men and women can take precedence of the teaching class, in devotion to their work, in self-sacrifice, or, indeed, in willingness to adopt the new when it shall also commend itself to them as serviceable; while, in a world of rough, material interests and successes, like ours, the teacher’s avocation still remains by far underpaid, and by parents, and even by the very pupils on whom its benefits are conferred, too rarely appreciated at anything like its just deserts.

If further extenuation of present short-comings should be deemed needful, the history of science—­and let us not forget that this history is almost wholly a very recent one—­presents it in abundant force.  Though practical arts have led to sciences, yet they have never advanced far until after they have felt the reactive benefits of the sciences springing from them.  Finally, in its highest phases, the art becomes subordinated to the science; thenceforth, the former can approach perfection only as the latter prepares its way.  Education has advanced beyond this turning point:  the art is henceforward dependent on the sciences.  But a science of education is an outgrowth from the science of mind; and among sciences, the latter is one of the latest and most difficult.  Thus, our investigations result, not in casting blame upon educators, but in revealing, we may say, what is still the intellectual ‘situation’ of the most cultivated and advanced nations.  We have our place still, not at any sort of consummation, but at a given stage in a progress.  And still, as ever in the past, the things that in reality most closely touch our interests are farthest removed from our starting-points of sense and reason, and by a necessity of the manner and progress of our knowing, are longest in being found.  And in this we have at least the assurance that the perfection of our race is to occur by no sudden bound or transformation, but by a toilsome and patient insight and growth.