1 6 THE TEACHING BOTANIST 



sent their idea of what is important, but that it is 

 forced upon them by the poor teaching of the other 

 subjects in the preparatory schools ; for many colleges 

 in their requirements for graduation, over which they 

 have full control, still demand much ancient Language 

 and the Mathematics, but leave the Sciences and His- 

 tory voluntary, thus stamping the former as essential, 

 and the latter as unessential to a good education. 

 The old requirements are still held to, and little note 

 is taken of the fact that the marvellous advance of the 

 Sciences in modern times has brought them into the 

 closest possible relations with every phase of human 

 life, and that the spread of democracy has created a 

 need for training in the knowledge essential to citizen- 

 ship. Our system of Education is in many respects 

 a survival from ancient times, and in these days often 

 has less the appearance of an attempt to fit a student 

 for the conditions of modern life, than of an aim to 

 separate him as far as possible from the modern 

 world, and place him in a class based upon artificial 

 distinctions, a phenomenon only explainable as a per- 

 sistence among us of a tendency to fetich-worship. 

 Happily, these ancient ideals, though widely, are by 

 no means universally prevalent, but even the most lib- 

 eral and advanced universities have hardly yet thrown 

 them off altogether. It is little wonder that critics 

 are so often found to declare that much of our sys- 

 tem contributes more to pedantry than to usefulness, 



