In this day of multiplied facilities for education, a day when training begins with the kindergarten and ends in what is called "higher education" both for men and women, the thoughtful observer is constantly confronted by the question, why are not the people educated? It is quite true that a great many people are; that very many more believe they are; and still more believe the day is coming when they are to _be_ educated in the broad and liberal sense of the word. Our systems, founded upon the old scholastic idea, are generally considered satisfactory, and any failure that may be observed in results is attributed to the fact that, in particular cases, they have not yet had time or opportunity for successful operation. And yet, year after year, we are passing through the mills of our public schools and colleges multitudes of minds that come out like travellers who climb to the top of every high tower in their journey, because they will not come home without being able "to say they have done it." Apparently, too many of our students go through their course for no better reason than to _say_ they have done it. There are grand and noble exceptions, but these are generally among those who do not care to SAY anything about it. The great majority, however, come forth in the mental condition of the man, who laboriously climbs step by step of the tower, takes his bird's-eye view of the field of learning, accepts the impressions made upon his mind by the vast picture and the vast mixture, and comes down to his own level again with no more real knowledge of that at which he has glanced than has the traveller who has taken a glimpse from the heights which he climbed, because the guide-book said this was "the thing to do." In every walk of life, among statesmen, men of business, and artisans, exist noble examples of exceptional profundity and reality of knowledge, but in the great average of so-called educated people of our own generation, we find the majority possessing very fragmentary interest in any of the subjects which, as students, were supposed to engage their attention. What they would have been without the so-called education we cannot judge, and it might be unfair to infer, but what they are no discriminating person, with a knowledge of what our systems claim, can fail to see. We cannot ignore the fact that for some reason they have failed to attain their natural and possible development.