ing. And so there are scientific men who combine poverty of intellect with width of knowledge. A botanist may be as foolish as a crest collector; a geologist, and even an astronomer, may, perhaps, be a pedant not more ennobled by the sphere of his thoughts than a cathedral spider is affected by the majesty of his abode; but I will venture to assert, that the great thoughts and principles which are to be gained only by scientific knowledge are not only of a quality that increases the dignity of a man's mind, are not only intrinsically glorious and elevating, but are not inferior, whether we regard their effect on the intellect or on the imagination, to those which may be reached by other studies. And I am not speaking only of the discoverers in science. There is a special charm, indeed, and stimulating power in original research, in exploring new regions; but there are splendid ideas, magnificent points of view, which, though others have reached them before, yet to attain is a lifelong pleasure. The ordinary tourist may climb to some well-worn spot in the Alps, he may ascend by the beaten track, he may even be carried there, and yet he will be richly rewarded by the view that unfolds itself before his eyes. He may not feel the glow of health, the buoyant soul of the first mountaineer that stood there; but he will see what he will remember for ever; he will get more than a new sensation, he will have enlarged his soul. So to be the first to climb, as Newton did, with solitary steps, to the untrodden heights from which he gazed on the solar system spread out at his feet, can never again be given to mortal man; but to attain the knowledge, to see the magnificent orderliness and progress, to be profoundly impressed with the infinities of space and time which it silently suggests, is to have gained a treasure that lasts as long as life will last. So also geology has a sublimity of its own, slowly reached by many steps and much toil. And, above all, the great ideas of natural law and harmonious adjustment can only be obtained by patient study in the fields of science; and are they not priceless to those who have in any degree won them? Who can contemplate our globe in this orderly system of the universe, with all the delicate adjustments that astronomy reveals, and all the splendid mechanism of the heavenscontemplate our atmosphere, with all its mechanical, chemical, and physical properties-the distant sun darting its light and heat and power on the globe, and fostering all the varied beautiful animal and vegetable life, giving rise to winds and showers and fruitful seasons, and beauties of form and richness of color, filling our hearts with food and gladness; who can know something of the inexorable sequences, see something of the felicitous combination of all the varied forces of nature that are employed,—and not feel impressed and awed by the view; not feel that he is in the presence of a Power and Wisdom that as far transcends the power and wisdom of man as the universe surpasses a watch in magnitude?

is to see that which he who sees it not is as incapable of estimating as the deaf man is of judging of music, or the blind of enjoying the glories of a sunset. Such are some of the ideas which crown science, and it is not granted to us to attain them except by slow degrees. Step by step must the growing mind approach them; and to exclude from our schools the preliminary steps is to debar from the attainment of such ideas all whose leisure in after-life is so curtailed that they can never break ground in any fresh subject for thought or labor.

EXACTNESS AND POWER OF SCIENCE.

Science is not only knowledge, but it is also power. The mind is not only an instrument for advancing science, but, what is more to our present point, science is an instrument for advancing the mind. All that can be said on this point has been said over and over again, and I can contribute nothing except my daily experience that what is said is true. Mill speaks of " the indispensable necessity of scientific instruction, for it is recommended by every consideration which pleads for any high order of intellectual education at all." Science is the best teacher of accurate, acute, and exhaustive observation of what is; it encourages the habit of mind which will rest on nothing but what is true; truth is the ultimate and only object, and there is the ever-recurring appeal to facts as the test of truth. And it is an excellent exercise of memory; not the verbal, formal memory, but the orderly, intelligent, connected, accurate storing up of knowledge. And of all processes of reasoning it stands alone as the exhaustive illustration. It is pre-eminently the study that illustrates the art of thinking. "The processes by which truth is attained,” to quote again from Mill, “reasoning and observation have been carried to their greatest known perfection in the physical sciences." In fact the investigations and reasoning of science, advanc ing as it does from the study of simple phenomena to the analysis of complicated actions, form a model of precisely the kind of mental work which is the business of every man, from his cradle to his grave; and reasoning, like other arts, is best learnt by practice and familiarity with the highest models. Science teaches what the power and what the weakness of the senses is; what evidence is, and what proof is. There is no characteristic of an educated man so marked as his power of judging of evidence and proof. The precautions that are taken against misinterpretation of what is called the evidence of the senses, and against wrong reasoning, and tracing the thoughts backward down to the ground of belief; the constant verification of theories; the candid suspension of judgment where evidence is still wanting; that wedding of induction and deduction into a happy unity and completeness of proof, the mixture of observation and ratiocination-are precisely the mental processes which all men have to go through somehow or other in their daily business, and which every human being who is capable of forming an intelligent opinion on the subject sees would be better done if men had familiarized themselves with the models of these processes which are furnished by science. I do not mean that a boy knows he is doing all these things; but he is doing them visibly. And when he applies the analysis of logic to the processes of his mind, he will find that he has been thinking logically, though unconsciously so.

Thinking is learnt by thinking; and it is my strongest conviction, as it is my daily experience, that boys can and do learn to think,-learn all the varied operations of the mind we sum up in that word,-by the study of science. A more vigorous school of thought, and a habit of mind less inclined to the faults of dogmatism on the one side, and deference to authority on the other, with more reverence for truth, and more confidence in knowledge, is the natural product of scientific instruction.

*

Moreover, taking education in its broad sense as the training of all the powers that go to make up the man, I would point out how much science contributes towards increasing the powers of the senses. All science is based, some one has

said, on the fact that we have great curiosity, and very weak eyes; and science gives men a marvelous extension of the power and range of the acuteness of those eyes. "Eyes and no eyes" is the title of an old story; and it scarcely seems too strong a way of marking the difference between the powers of perception of a cultivated naturalist, and those of the ordinary gentleman ignorant of everything in nature. To the one the stars of heaven, and the stones on earth, the forms of the hills, and the flowers in the hedges, are a constant source of that great and peculiar pleasure derived from intelligence. And day by day do I see how boys increase their range of sight, and that not only of the things we teach them to see, but they outrun us, and discover for themselves. And the power, once gained, can never be lost. I know many instances of boys whose eyes were opened at school by the ordinary natural science lectures, who have since found great pleasure and constant occupation in some branch of scientific study.

And I would add that whatever may be the defects of a purely literary education, which I obviously do not intend to discuss, they cannot be remedied by mathematics alone. Mathematics are so often thought, by those who are ignorant of them, to be the key to all reasoning, and to be the perfection of training, and so often spoken of by proficients in them as mysteries that it is worth the labor of half a lifetime to understand, that it is worth while to remember that after all they are only compendious and very limited methods of applying deductive reasoning, assisted by symbols, to questions of which the data are, or are supposed to be, extremely precise. They no more teach reasoning in the ordinary sense of the word than traveling by railway fits a man for exploring in Central Africa. And hence, while I set a very high value on arithmetic and geometry in all education, it is not because they supply the place of science in any sense, but on entirely different grounds. They form the language of science, however, and are indispensable to its study.*

DEFICIENCY OF A MERELY SCIENTIFIC CURRICULUM.

The vague impression that reverence, faith, belief in the unseen and the spiritual, and in truths derived from individual consciousness, are diminished, as superstitions are diminished, by the school of science, must not be met by an off-hand denial that there is any foundation for it; for constant dealing with nature and exercise of the intellect alone, as contrasted with humanity and the exercise of the moral feelings, unquestionably tend to exclude men from the highest thoughts. All that may be said about the dignity of the study of created things and this is a truth that often needs to be enforced-must not make its advocates lose sight of the relation of this study to others. The wish of many men of science that it should form the staple of liberal education, if gratified, would probably lead to a loss of gracefulness and unconscious art in style, which characterizes nations which study the classics, and moreover would produce a peculiar and dangerous one-sidedness, which may be distinctly seen in many individual cases. In such cases, their constant study of one kind of evidence raises a secret disinclination and real inaptitude, for the time being, to accept

*It is singular that the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge is so unscientific, and the Natural Science Tripos at Oxford so unmathematical. At Cambridge a man may get the highest honors in mathematics and natural philosophy and have never seen a crystal, a lens, an air pump, or a thermometer; and at Oxford a man may get his First in natural science without knowing the Binominal Theorem or the solution of a triangle. Surely these are mistakes.

evidence of a different kind, and induces them openly or tacitly, to depreciate and distrust it. They are constantly tempted to consider the finer mental and relig ious sensibilities as useless, and as if they proved nothing. They are facts, of course, but facts which verge on fancies; and they have acquired a distaste for this kind of reflection, and something of contempt for its value in others. They seem to have raised a wall between themselves and certain truths; to have dazzled their eyes by a study of the glaring truths of external nature, and to be for the time incapable of discerning the dimmer but nobler truths of the soul and its relations. They distrust what may not be referred to the mechanism of organization, and disbelieve that the reason alone can be the source of real truths. Yet all this does not tend to prove that science should be excluded from schools, but that it should not form the staple of our education.

TIME-SUBJECTS AND METHODS OF SCIENTIFIC Study.

Two hours a week, with the same time for preparation out of school, is the time given at Rugby, and is as much as I would wish to see the subject started with. I do not doubt however that ultimately it will be thought better to increase this, in the upper part of the school, to three or four hours a week. This seems too little to ask, and the advocates of science outside schools will disallow so petty a claim. But there is very little experience of the working of scientific teaching in great schools; there is at present so slight a recognition of science in schools on the part of the Universities, that any public school which gave up much time to science, would be hopelessly out of the race at the Universities. And this would be suicidal. If the reform is on sound principles, let science gain a footing only, and a friendly struggle for existence will point out whether the foreigner can be naturalized, and flourish.

Next as to the parts of science to be taught, and the methods of teaching; and the discussion of these must be given at some length.

It is important to distinguish at once, and clearly, between scientific information and training in science. In other words,' to quote from the Report of the Committee appointed by the Council of the British Association to consider the best means for promoting Scientific Education in Schools, 'between general literary acquaintance with scientific facts, and the more minute and accurate knowledge that may be gained by studying the facts and methods at first hand, under the guidance of a competent teacher. Both of these are valuable; it is very desirable, for example, that boys should have some general information about the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as the simple facts of Astronomy, of Geology, of Physical Geography, and of elementary Physiology. On the other hand, the scientific habit of mind, which is the principal benefit resulting from scientific training, and which is of incalculable value, whatever be the pursuits of after life, can better be atrained by a thorough knowledge of the facts and principles of one science, than by a general acquaintance with what has been said or written about many. Both of these should co-exist, we think, at any school which professes to offer the highest liberal education.'

There may be used in the lower part of the school, some work on Physical Geography, embracing the elements of the subjects above-named; and it will be found extremely convenient to introduce short courses of lectures on such subjects as these, even in the higher parts of the school. For since new boys are perpetually coming, and it is impossible that a new course of lectures on Botany,

or on Mechanics, should be started in every division of the school at the begin ning of every term, without requiring the number of natural science masters to be almost indefinitely increased, there must be some collecting place, a class in which the new boys shall accumulate until they are numerous enough to form a body to enter on the regular course. This must be a class in which Fhysical Geography, including if the master likes, the elements of Geology and Astronomy, is taught. In such classes as these the ideas of boys are expanded; fresh books are opened to them; and some will avail themselves of the opening, and learn a good deal about the subjects spoken of. but the value is more literary than scientific; and even after the most careful teaching will be found disappointing. In lecturing on such subjects as Geology, Astronomy, or Physical Geography, the master never can be sure that the ideas he has so clearly in his own mind are seized by all his boys. There seems to be a deficiency in pow ers of conception on the part of very many boys. Theorists may say what they please, but it is true that the act of the mind in forming a conception is difficult to excite. There is a marvelous, truly marvelous, want of imagination in many minds, want of power to form and keep in view a distinct image of the thing reasoned or spoken about. It is not only want of attention, but there seems to be a total separation in some minds between words and things, perhaps the result, in part, of early teaching; so that the knowledge apparently gained is sometimes wholly unsound.

Meaning of Mental Training.

The mental training to be got from the study of science is the main reason for its introduction into schools. It is with reference to this that the subjects of instruction, and the methods of instruction, must be chosen. It is important therefore, that what is meant by mental training should be distinctly understood. Training is the cultivation bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of developing them. It is possible to train the body, and to train the mind, for a great variety of purposes, some very foolish ones. But in all cases the training consists in doing. If you wish to swim, you must go into the water and swim as best you can: if you wish to box, there is no way of learning but by boxing if you wish to study music or drawing, you must play and sing or draw: and thus in educating others you must make them do whatever you intend them to learn to do, and select subjects and circumstances in which doing is most facilitated. Now, laying aside out of consideration the accumulation of statistical information, and all kinds of education except intellectual, it is clear that this ultimately divides itself into the training of the artistic and logical faculties. And the logical faculties are of two kinds. It is by a logical faculty that we are able to understand other men's thoughts and apprehend new ideas. The culti vated, intelligent, imaginative mind is one in which this receptive faculty is strong. Nothing so marks the uneducated man as his dullness, his incapacity, in understanding what you say to him, if you depart in the slightest degree from the range of his daily thoughts. For the ordinary intercourse of men of education, for the spread and fertility of active thought, this faculty of intelligence is invaluable. Again, it is by a logical faculty that the mind deals with things and the relations of things. The mind which is thoughtful rather than receptive or imaginative, which studies phenomena, be they in mental philosophy, in politics, or in natural science, with a view to elicit and establish the true relations that exist among these phenomena, is the type of the mind in which