PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDOOS; POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM; EFFECTS ON EDUCATION; BUDDHISTIC REFORM; CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND PURNA; EDUCATIONAL USAGES; EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES; PRIMITIVE PERIOD; RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION; PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS; RESPECT FOR TEACHERS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT; EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE; FORMALISM; LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE (CONFUCIUS); EDUCATION AMONG OTHER PEOPLE OF THE EAST; THE EGYPTIANS AND THE PERSIANS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY. 1. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.--A German historian of philosophy begins his work by asking this question: “Was Adam a philosopher?” In the same way certain historians of pedagogy begin by learned researches upon the education of savages. We shall not carry our investigations so far back. Doubtless from the day when a human family began its existence, from the day when a father and a mother began to love their children, education had an existence. But there is very little practical interest in studying these obscure beginnings of pedagogy. It is a matter of erudition and curiosity.[6] Besides the difficulty of gathering up the faint traces of primitive education, there would be but little profit in painfully following the slow gropings of primeval man. In truth, the history of pedagogy dates but from the period relatively recent, when human thought, in the matter of education, substituted reflection for instinct, art for blind nature. So we shall hasten to begin the study of pedagogy among the classical peoples, the Greeks and the Romans, after having thrown a rapid glance over some Eastern nations considered either in their birthplace and remote origin, or in their more recent development. 2. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE HINDOOS.--It would not be worth our while to enter into details respecting a civilization so different from our own as that of the Hindoos. But we should not forget that we are in part the descendants of that people, and that we belong to the same ethnic group, and that the European languages are derived from theirs.