696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tender intellect shooting up in like manner, with the perceptive fac- 

 ulties all aliv r e at top ; and they, too, seem to think that Nature has 

 made a mistake, and so they treat the mind as the child treats his 

 bean-plant, and turn it upside down to make it grow better. They 

 bury the promising young buds deep in a musty mould formed of 

 the decay of centuries, under the delusion that out of such debris 

 they may gather some wholesome nourishment ; when we know all 

 that they want is the light and warmth of the sun to stimulate them, 

 and the free air of heaven in which to unfold themselves. What 

 heartless cruelty pursues the little child-martyr every day and all the 

 day long, at home or at school alike ; in this place bidden to mind his 

 book and not to look out of the window in that, told to hold his 

 tongue and to remember that children must not ask questions ! A lash 

 from a whalebone-switch upon the tender little fingers too eagerly out- 

 stretched could not sting more keenly, or be felt with a sharper sense 

 of wrong, than such a rebuke coming across the no less eagerly ex- 

 tended tentacles of the dawning and inquiring intellect. 



Now, a system of education founded on a principle like this is 

 not going to fit men to engage successfully in that hazardous game 

 of life in which, in Prof. Huxley's beautiful simile, we are all of us 

 represented as playing with an unseen antagonist, who enforces 

 against us relentlessly every minutest rule of the game, whether 

 known to us or not. Still less can it fit them to bring to light new 

 rules of this difficult game, never yet detected by any human intelli- 

 gence. Yet it is precisely of this kind of men that the world has pres- 

 ent need. For, grand as are the triumphs of scientific investigation 

 already achieved, it is impossible to doubt that there are still grander 

 yet behind to reward the zealous laborers of the time to come. I 

 know that it sometimes seems to us otherwise ; I know that the very 

 grandeur of the achievements of the past makes us sometimes doubt- 

 ful of the future ; for it is generally true that the portals of Nature's 

 secret chambers, yet unexplored, are only dimly discernible before 

 they are unlocked. 



I remember a time it is now long gone by when this skeptical 

 feeling as to the possibilities of large scientific progress in the time to 

 come was extremely prevalent so prevalent that a learned professor 

 of a nei<j;hborina: college thought it worth his while to combat, in an 

 energetic public address, the discouraging notion that Nature has no 

 longer any important secrets to yield. Subsequent history has mag- 

 nificently corroborated his argument. For that was a time when, as 

 yet, no Faraday had drawn a living spark from the lifeless magnet ; 

 no Daniell, or Grove, or Bunsen, had given us an enduring source of 

 electro-dynamic power ; no Ohm had taught us how to measure such 

 a power when obtained j no Bessel had detected the parallaxes of the 

 fixed stars ; no Adams or Leverrier had thrown his grapple into 

 space, and felt the influence of an unseen planet trembling, to use the 



