When in any of the chief activities of human life it becomes necessary to adopt new methods, or to make some new application of old and well-tried principles, it is always best that change should be discriminating, gradual, and slow; and perhaps nowhere does this maxim demand recognition and respect more imperatively than in educational reform. We are not disposed to find fault with those who contend for the authority and sway of the progressive spirit of the present as against the spirit of the past. In science, art, literature, education; in religion, morals, philosophy, theology, every genuine gain in depth, breadth, and fulness is to be hailed with a thousand welcomes. It would be a pity if an unenlightened veneration for the traditions and principles of a superannuated conservatism were allowed to rob the world even of the smallest portion of the benefit of a single new and useful idea.

The needs and duties of each age require that intelligence should steadily advance, and in the field of truth there is always something valuable left for the latest gleaner. No one is fitted for the duties of to-day who dreads the spirit of free inquiry that breathes around him, and fearlessly addresses its questions in every direction. Especially should new and better hints be welcomed as to the true science and method of instructing the youthful mind. Patience, delicacy, intelligence, and skill are nowhere required more than in this.

But while it is true that each generation must have liberty to do its work in its own way, no generation can afford to despise or disparage the wisdom and experience of previous ages, or to institute reforms which revolutionize the methods and the principles of the past. The intellectual triumphs and achievements which are the goal of one age are indeed no more than the starting-point of the next; but the links of connection must be preserved unbroken. The conditions of a successful and symmetrical development of the mental powers are substantially the same in every land and time, and there are great principles which, however variously we may apply them, can never in themselves be violated or discarded with impunity. So far as the new education so strenuously advocated in our day honors and observes the eternal laws of the mind, we can afford to contemplate the new ventures with equanimity, if not with hope; but there is reason to fear that the almost unlimited freedom of individual choice as to subjects of study accorded to young and inexperienced minds in colleges where new departures have been taken is scarcely compatible with the compliance those laws rigidly require.