However, it is not alone the intellectual advantage which recommends the history of pedagogy; it is also the moral stimulus which will be derived from the study. For the sake of encouraging to noble efforts the men and women who are our teachers, is it of no moment to present to them the names of Comenius, Rollin, and Pestalozzi as men who have attained such high excellence in their profession? Will not the teacher who each day resumes his heavy burden be revived and sustained? Will he not enter his class-room, where so many difficulties and toils await him, a better and a stronger man if his imagination teems with articulate memories of those who, in the past, have opened for him the way, and shown him by their example how to walk in it? By the marvellous agency of electricity we are now able to transport material and mechanical power, and to cause its transfer across space without regard to distance. But by reading and by meditation we are able to do something analogous to this in the moral world; we are able to borrow from the ancients, across the centuries, something of the moral energy that inspired them, and to make live again in our own hearts some of their virtues of devotion and faith. Doubtless a brief history of pedagogy could not, from this point of view, serve as a substitute for the actual reading of the authors in question; but it is a preparation for this work and inspires a taste for it. We are warranted in saying, then, that the utility of the history of pedagogy blends with the utility of pedagogy itself. To-day it is no longer necessary for us to offer any proof on this point. Pedagogy, long neglected even in our country, has regained its standing; nay more, it has become the fashion. “France is becoming addicted to pedagogy” was a remark recently made by one of the men who, of our day, will have contributed most to excite and also to direct the taste for pedagogical studies.[4] The words _pedagogue_, _pedagogy_, have encountered dangers in the history of our language. Littré tells us that the word _pedagogue_ “is most often used in a bad sense.” On the other hand, we shall see, if we consult his dictionary, that several years ago the sense of the word _pedagogy_ was not yet fixed, since it is there defined as “the moral education of children.” To-day, not only in language, but in facts and in institutions, the fate of pedagogy is settled. Of course we must neither underrate it nor attribute to it a sovereign and omnipotent efficiency that it does not have. We might freely say of pedagogy what Sainte-Beuve said of logic: The best is that which does not argue in its own favor; which is not enamoured of itself, but which modestly recognizes the limits of its power. The best is that which we make for ourselves, not that which we learn from books.