4 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
and which I would to-night like to ask your attention to; that is, the 
relation between educational methods and educational ends. I have asked 
myself repeatedly during the congress, What do we mean bv educational 
methods ? 
Let us ask, What do we mean by method ? A method is a way to do a 
thing ; a method is a means to an end. It involves therefore two ideas, 
two things—a thing, and the way to do that thing; an end, and the means 
to attain that end. Moreover, a method always presupposes the end. 
Methods are regulated by ends, not ends by methods ; and although in 
execution the means may precede the end, yet in thought the end precedes 
the method. Therefore it behooves us who are studying educational 
methods to ask what is the end of education in order that we may devise 
‘he best educational methods. What is the end of education ? In the 
army, private soldiers are not expected to know the end and plan of the 
campaign. It is their business really to do what is given to them. It 
belongs to the general and to a few trusted officers to know the plan, to 
know the end. The end is to be kept from the knowledge of the enemy. 
But in our work there is no enemy. In our work there is no reason why 
the end should be reserved to the few. In our army of educators, every 
sducator ought to know the end of education, in order that the work that 
she educator is engaged in may be done more understandingly, may be 
one more reasonably, may be done more successfully. 
What is, then, the end of education ? What is the end toward which all 
our methods should tend ? Socrates found long ago that it was much 
easier to ask questions than to have them answered, or even to answer them 
himself ; and if Socrates were to come into our midst this evening, to quiz 
1s as he used to quiz the people in Athens, he probably would puzzle us 
a great deal and receive a great variety of answers. What would the 
answers probably be ? The most obvious and elementary answer that 
would be given to Socrates would be, that the end of education is to 
impart knowledge, to communicate information, to see that information 
is acquired by the young, either from instruction of the people, or from 
books which are studied under the teacher's care. We know that this 
imparting of knowledge makes up the work of most of the teachers, and 
it would not at all be singular if some should suppose that that was the 
end and the all of ‘education. With that end in view, what would be the 
method of education ? The best educational methods would aim, first, at 
improving memory ; secondly, at calling out from the great multitude 
of facts those which are typical and generic; thirdly, seeing that these 
typical and generic facts are learned by students, and then in trying to 
devise systems by which what has been learned should be retained and not 
forgotten. That would be the end of that method. Now, is this the end ? 
In our experience we doubtless have sometimes met men who are living 
encyclopedias of natural information, and yet who have indifferent powers 
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