more are about to follow-that it is mere chance that this particular evanescent gesture and thought, instead of fading away like so many other beautiful gestures or thoughts, should have survived through the centuries which lie between ourselves and the Greeks. They seized, in their art, the psychological moment, as well as the temporal moment : the activity of mind, the thought causing the bodily movement; they seized the most beautiful and significant moment in a series of movements, and caught the most significant moment in the 'stream of consciousness.' Every new movement of the body destroyed a harmony, in the dance, but to create another even more beautiful; and it was this, the most perfect, the moment of nascent activity, that was caught in the art. The movement of all living things, the everchanging and continuously-moving nature of phenomena-the perpetual flux of Heraclitus-is felt throughout all Greek art, like a great heart pulsating in it, so that one almost expects to see the Victories continue their flight through the air, or the Nereids melt into the waves from which they have just emerged, or the procession on the Parthenon frieze continue its rhythmic march.

And the dance, beyond everything else, could develop in the Greek mind a sense of movement. It would of necessity impart, almost unconsciously, and very subtly, something of its restlessness, its rhythm, and measure to the work of those who are ever susceptible to the slightest impression from the surrounding life. The artist would give something of the dancer's lightness and nimbleness to all his figures; the vision of the human form in its most beautiful activity lingering in his mind, he would, in making his statue or painting his picture, endow the dead substance with all the life and movement of that living form, which had but now passed from out his sight. And something of the dancer's supple grace and rhythmical movement is felt everywhere in Greek art. Their art communicates to us a sense of movement and of intensity of life; their figures might be merely holding back, for a moment only, the breath of life. In the measured and martial march of the warrior, with foot forward for the brisk pace, we seem to feel the rhythm and hear the music of the march; in the solemn procession of the Parthenon frieze, one has this same sense of the measured pace keeping time to a chant in the frenzied Bacchic scenes, one catches the strains and the impassioned measures of the revellers; in the flying Victories, or the swift Iris, in the whole world of restless, palpitating nymphs and Nereids, the swirling draperies, the transparent clinging garments of the dancers, and their animated steps are transferred with the most delicate touch, unconsciously, from flesh to marble, from the transient, fleeting life to the immortal world of art.

Perhaps the vague term of ' rhythm,' wherewith the Greeks qualified the work of certain artists of antiquity, might express this characteristic movement of their art. It might almost be supposed that the

term 'rhythm' was borrowed from music, poetry, and dancing to express the thing taken from the musical arts' by sculpture and painting that indefinable quality suggested by the term 'frozen music' applied to the plastic arts of Greece. 'Rhythm' in art would seem to mean the system of changes producing a constant harmony of the parts of the body when in motion,' and this rhythm, whether in music, in poetry, in the beat of the dancer's foot, or in his gestures and attitudes, this rhythm which belongs so particularly to the Dance and the Plastic Arts, and the harmony which characterises all Greek life and thought, might come to be apprehended as part of the same great system of rhythm and harmony-the harmony of the spheres-which Pythagoras took to be the ruling and guiding law of the universe.

MARCELLE AZRA HINCKS,

EDUCATION, ELEMENTARY AND

SECONDARY1

THE term elementary education,' though used from time to time before the Education Act of 1870, was undoubtedly brought into general use and given a legal meaning by that Act, the object of which was to provide for public elementary education in England and Wales.' Though for many years previously grants from the national purse in aid of education had been given by the Committee of the Privy Council which subsequently became the Board of Education, the proposal to pay for education directly out of the rates was a new thing running counter to many strong prejudices. To meet those prejudices the Act limited the instruction thus to be paid for to that which was absolutely necessary; the teaching offered by the Act to those who presumably could not well afford to pay for it was to be strictly elementary so as not to compete with the higher teaching paid for by the well-to-do out of their own purses.

By the working of this Act of 1870 the term 'secondary education which had been gradually coming into use acquired a definite meaning; it came to denote all that education below university teaching which was not provided for in the public elementary schools established by the Act or in the voluntary schools which were offering the same elementary education as that given in those schools. Thus the two terms elementary education' and 'secondary education' came to bear meanings somewhat different from mere degrees of learning. 'Elementary education' came to mean that kind of education which it is lawful to pay for out of the rates and which therefore must be limited in character, and secondary education all other kinds of educa tion below university teaching, not paid for out of the rates. distinction became a class distinction, not an educational one.

The

During the last quarter of the past century elementary education developed rapidly; while secondary education remained for the most part disorganised, it, under the direct influence of public control, became stringently organised. Continuing to be restricted in character, by reason of its legislative conditions it became more and more differen

'Board of Education. Report of the Consultative Committee upon questions affecting Higher Elementary schools.

tiated as a special kind of education, special as to the subjects taught and still more as to the way in which and the extent to which these were taught. The teachers teaching this elementary education became sharply distinguished by their training, by their position, and by the limits of their careers from the teachers of secondary education, so much so that when in course of time a Register of Teachers was established, the elementary teachers, the teachers in elementary schools, were at once and without difficulty placed in a category by themselves, wholly separate from the teachers in all other kinds of schools.

During this development, however, a feeling sprang up, and year by year grew stronger, that this elementary education, as defined by law, though intended for the industrial classes, and defrayed out of rates, because it was supposed to be for the benefit of the industrial classes, was seriously failing in adequately fitting the young of those classes for industrial careers; what was taught in the elementary schools seemed to have no connection with actual industrial life, to be of little or no use when it was brought into the workshop, and otherwise failed to make the learners ready to become skilled and capable workmen and workwomen. Hence arose a demand for what is vaguely and uncertainly known as technical instruction. An effort to supply in the school itself something more than the ordinary school teaching was checked by the Cockerton judgment; an attempt to provide what was needed by the Technical Instruction Act brought about variable but on the whole uncertain and inadequate results; and, though various subsidiary agencies have been employed as aids, the state of elementary education at the present day is such as to have led to the widespread conviction that the system is failing to effect satisfactorily that which it was intended to effect, namely, to equip the children of the lower classes for the occupations which they would probably have to follow.

The failings of the system are very clearly set forth in a Report which the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education have made to the Board on 'Higher Elementary Schools.' The so-called Higher Elementary School' is an attempt to remedy the deficiencies. on which we are dwelling, and in reporting on the features which a Higher Elementary School ought in their opinion to possess the Committee have been led to some general considerations worthy of most serious attention.

The question referred to the Committee, put in its narrowest terms, was somewhat as follows. When a bright boy or girl has adequately profited by the instruction given in the elementary school up to about the age of twelve, what further teaching for two or three years will best equip him or her for one or other of the lower posts in industrial or commercial life? The Committee report somewhat as follows:

The teaching ought to be of such a character as to awaken the

interest of the pupil and to make him or her feel that what he or she is learning will be of use in the occupation which he or she will probably follow.

The teaching ought to be carried out in such a way that the senses, the hand, eye, and ear, are trained, as well as what in a narrow sense is sometimes called the 'mind,' the mind being trained as far as possible through and with the help of the body. In other words, what is sometimes called manual instruction ought to form an important part of the teaching, but ought to be made a help to and as far as possible a means of the more definitely intellectual teaching.

The teaching ought to be twofold in character: on the one hand humanistic and literary, and on the other scientific. Of the former English history and literature should supply the basis, with such extensions as may be found desirable; the latter should be furnished by elementary mathematics and some other sciences. Both kinds of teaching ought to be carried out with the view of building up character and producing a well-furnished, active, alert mind rather than with the view of imparting special knowledge; but the teacher ought to strive so to teach as to make his pupils feel that what they are being taught will be of use to them in and will fit them for their after life. In order to enable him or her to do this effectively, the teacher must have considerable latitude as to exactly what and how he or she teaches, must not be too strictly bound by formal curricula, and must be allowed, should the circumstances of the district of the school suggest it, to make use of the industries and occupations with which the pupils necessarily are familiar as the subject-matter of the teaching, but in such a way as to lead the learner to general principles and not to a premature routine acquaintance with the special practices of the industry selected for the lessons.

No one can doubt that such a kind of teaching, carried on from the age of twelve to about fifteen or even for a shorter period, by a skilful teacher, fully alive to the ideas which have led to such a programme and keen to secure the results which it promises, would in very short time raise to a marked degree the intellectual level and strengthen the characters of the pupils who had the good fortune to be so taught. But such an education is not elementary education in the sense of the Act of 1870; it is not the mere beginning of education so necessary as to justify its being paid for out of the rates; it is not an education exclusively or even specially intended or fitted for the working classes. The kind of teaching recommended for the higher elementary school by the Consultative Committee is essentially a secondary education based on the elementary education given up to about twelve years of age; and it is also emphatically and essentially such an education as with some extensions would prove the best possible education, not for the children of the working classes only, but for all those young people who have to leave school at about