SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE. 353 



York law : " We find that all who are in any way engaged with 

 the practical work of education have a protest constantly against 

 the multitude of subjects which would-be ' reformers/ ' cranks/ 

 and ' faddists ' would require our boys and girls to study in the 

 schools. If they get their way, the mental energy of our children 

 would be dissipated and education become a sheer impossibility. 

 The most fundamental of all reforms at the present time is the 

 limitation of the number of subjects taught to any one student, 

 with distinction between what is fundamental and what is sub- 

 sidiary, in order that the short time which the young people of 

 the country can devote to study can be put upon the most impor- 

 tant and fruitful subjects. You hear people say every day, ' Is 

 it not a shame that children should grow up in ignorance of this, 

 that, and the other subject ! ' whereas the truth of the matter is, 

 that it is in most cases an advantage that pupils have heard 

 nothing of the matter. 



" When I pass from the general principle of this law to scru- 

 tinize its details, it shows itself absurd on the very face of it. If 

 there is any one thing which scientific teachers require at the 

 present time, it is that students of science shall not be taught 

 from text-books. In the programme of many of our best schools 

 (I do not mean colleges or universities) the use of the text-book 

 in science is absolutely forbidden. The ' reformers ' who desire 

 the legislation under consideration prescribe a text-book ; and 

 not only so, they tell the teachers how many pages are to be stud- 

 ied in order that students may understand ' the nature and efi^ects 

 of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics.' It would be a great re- 

 flection on the educational wisdom of those who are responsible 

 for making our laws if a conception of scientific teaching so wood- 

 en, so utterly mechanical, were ever to find a place in our statute 

 books. The scientific teachers of the country^ whether in the 

 public schools or in the colleges and universities, would justly 

 hold us up to ridicule." 



In the same vein Dr. William R. Huntington, rector of Grace 

 Church, says : " As a member of the Committee of Sixty, charged 

 with the investigation, from a scientific and impartial standpoint, 

 of the whole question of the relation of alcoholic stimulants to 

 the animal economy, I have been in the way of hearing the edu- 

 cational phase of the subject very fully discussed, and I am con- 

 vinced that the attempt to indoctrinate the minds of the youth of 

 the country in the premises, though well meant, has been over- 

 done. Let the children be taught the perils of drinking and the 

 horrors of drunkenness as emphatically as you please, but let us 

 not palm off on their innocent minds pseudo-chemistry and inac- 

 curate physiology as necessary truth." 



Every institution tends to magnify itself, and the need of a 



