348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As regards the higher education, he was a strong advocate for science 

 and modern languages, though without wishing to drop the classics. 



Some years ago, for an article on higher education, I consulted a 

 good many of the highest authorities on the number of hours per week 

 which, in their judgment, should be given to the principal subjects. 

 Huxley, amongst others, kindly gave me his views. He suggested ten 

 hours for ancient languages and literature, ten for modern languages 

 and literature, eight for arithmetic and mathematics, eight for science, 

 two for geography and two for religious instruction. 



For my own part I am firmly convinced that the amount of time 

 devoted to classics has entirely failed in its object. The mind is like 

 the body — it requires change. Mutton is excellent food; but mutton for 

 breakfast, mutton for lunch, and mutton for dinner would soon make 

 any one hate the sight of mutton, and so, Latin grammar before break- 

 fast, Latin grammar before lunch, and Latin grammar before dinner is 

 enough to make almost any one hate the sight of a classical author. 

 Moreover, the classics, though an important part, are not the whole of 

 education, and a classical scholar, however profound, if he knows no 

 science, is but a half-educated man after all. 



In fact, Huxley was no opponent of a classical education in the 

 proper sense of the term, but he did protest against it in the sense in 

 which it is usually employed, namely, as an education from which 

 science is excluded, or represented only by a few random lectures. 



He considered that specialization should not begin till sixteen or 

 seventeen. At present we begin in our Public School system to spe- 

 cialize at the very beginning, and to devote an overwhelming time to 

 Latin and Greek, which, after all, the boys are not taught to speak. 

 Huxley advocated the system adopted by the founders of the University 

 of London, and maintained to the present day that no one should be 

 given a degree who did not show some acquaintance with science and 

 with at least one modern language. 



"As for the so-called 'conflict of studies/ " he exclaims, "one might 

 as well inquire which of the terms of a Eule of Three sum one ought to 

 know in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is such a sum, 

 in which your duty multiplied into your capacity, and divided by your 

 circumstances, gives you the fourth term in the proportion, which is 

 your deserts, with great accuracy" ('Life of Professor Huxley,' p. 406). 



"That man," he said, "I think, has had a liberal education, who 

 has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his 

 will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, 

 it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its 

 parts of equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam 

 engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well 

 as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge 



