Now this is the gist of the teaching which we have laboured to advance in the _Parents’ Union_ and its various agencies. “The proper study of mankind is man,” is one of those “thoughts beyond their thought” which poets light upon; and I am able to add my personal testimony to the fact that under no other study with which I am acquainted is it possible to trace such almost visible expansion of mind and soul in the young student as in this of philosophy. A peculiarly interesting and original line of thought, worked out very fully in this volume, is, that just as the child with an individual bent should have that bent encouraged and “educated,” so of a nation:-- “If social science rejects every mystical interpretation of the common spirit animating a nation, it by no means rejects the reflected consciousness or spontaneous divination, possessed by every nation, of the functions which have devolved upon it.” Here is a most fruitful suggestion. Think of the fitness of a scheme of physical, intellectual, and moral training, based upon our ideal of the English character and of the destiny of the English nation. The chapter on “_Power of Education and of Idea-Forces--Suggestions-- Heredity_” is very valuable, as utilising a floating nebulæ of intuitions, which are coming upon us in connection with the hundred and one hypnotic marvels of the day. M. Fouillée maintains that-- “The power of instruction and education, denied by some and exaggerated by others, being nothing but the power of ideas and sentiments, it is impossible to be too exact in determining at the outset the extent and limits of this force. This psychological problem is the foundation of pedagogy.” In a word, M. Fouillée returns boldly to the Platonic philosophy; the _idea_ is to him all in all, in philosophy and education. But he returns empty-handed. The wave of naturalism, now perhaps on the ebb, has left neither flotsam nor jetsam for him, save for stranded fragments of the Darwinian theory. Now, we maintain that to this wave of thought, naturalistic, materialistic--what you will--we owe the discovery of the physiological basis of education.