introduced entirely new aims and methods and purposes into the educational
process.

From inquiry into religious matters and inquiry into the phenomena of
nature, it was but a short and a natural step to inquiry into the nature
and functions of government. This led to a critical questioning of the old
established order, the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, the
growth of a consciousness of national problems, and the bringing to the
front of questions of political interest to a degree unknown since the
days of ancient Rome. The eighteenth century marks, in these directions, a
sharp turning-point in human thinking, and the end of mediaevalism and the
ushering in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The eighteenth
century, too, witnessed a culmination of a long series of progressive
changes which had been under way for centuries, and the flood time of a
slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the
intellect and the limitation of natural human liberties by either Church
or State. The flood of individualism which characterized the second half
of the eighteenth century demanded outlet, and, denied, it rose and swept
away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers--religious, intellectual,
social, and political--and opened the way for the marked progress in all
lines which characterized the nineteenth century. Out of this new spirit
was to come the American and the French Revolutions, the establishment of
constitutional liberty and religious freedom, the beginnings of the
abolition of privilege, the rise of democracy, a great extension of
educational advantages, and the transfer of the control of the school from
the Church to the State that the national welfare might be better promoted
thereby.

Now arose the modern conception of the school as the great constructive
instrument of the State, and a new individual and national theory as to