The profession of teaching has long been characterised by certain habitual convictions, whichSpencer undertook to shake rudely, and even to deride. The first of these convictions is thatall education, physical, intellectual, and moral, must be authoritative, and need take noaccount of the natural wishes, tendencies, and motives of the ignorant and undeveloped child.The second dominating conviction is that to teach means to tell,show, children what theyought to see, believe, and utter. Expositions by the teacher and books are therefore the truemeans of education. The third and supreme conviction is that the method of education whichproduced the teacher himself and the contemporaryearlier scholars, authors, and publicists,must be the righteous and sufficient method. Its fruits demonstrate its soundness, and make itsacred. Herbert Spencer, in the essays included in the present volume, assaulted all three ofthese firm convictions. Accordingly, the ideas on education which he put forth more than fiftyyears ago have penetrated educational practice very slowly—particularly in England; but theyare now coming to prevail in most civilised countries, and they will prevail more and more.Through him, the thoughts on education of Comenius, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, Rousseau,Pestalozzi, and other noted writers on this neglected subject are at last winning their way intopractice, with the modificationsadaptations which the immense gains of the human race inknowledge and power since the nineteenth century opened have shown to be wise.Charles W. Eliot.1910