24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Technical difficulties prevented the formal nomination of the com- 

 mittee in that year ; and before the next meeting came round the 

 Science Commission was in full work, and the ground was covered. 

 Five years have passed; the commission has reported ; and the Brit- 

 ish Association, if it deals at all Avith the problem that lies at the 

 root of our scientific progress, will have to face the fact that only ten 

 endowed schools in England give as much as four hours a week to 

 the study of science ; in other words, that, in spite of ten years of 

 talk, the eclat of a Royal Commission, a complete consensus of scientific 

 authority, and the loud demands of less educated but not less keen- 

 sighted public opinion, the organization and practical working of 

 science in our higher schools has scarcely advanced a step since the 

 Schools Inquiry Commission reported in 1868. 



Are the causes of this strange paralysis discoverable, and are they 

 capable of present remedy ? We believe that they are notorious, and 

 that it is in the power of the British Association at the present mo- 

 ment to overrule them. It is therefore in the hope of rekindling a 

 productive enthusiasm at a critical moment in the history of our 

 science-teaching that we appeal with all the earnestness of which we 

 are capable to the leaders of the great parliament, whose session will 

 have opened before this goes to press. 



The first obstacle to be understood and reckoned with is the 

 amazing confusion in the minds of unscientific leaders of opinion as 

 to the very nature of education. An ex-Lord Chancellor gives away 

 prizes to a school, declares in stately terms that Greek and Latin must 

 always form the backbone of high intellectual training, and that the 

 sciences can only be tolerated as a sort of ornament or capital to this 

 great central vertebral column. On the following day an ex-Chancel- 

 lor of the Exchequer gives away prizes at another school, assures the 

 boys that modern scientific teaching is their being's end and aim, and 

 envies them by comparison with himself, who at Winchester and Ox- 

 ford basked only in the " clarum antiques lucis jubar." 1 In all such 

 public utterances chaos reigns supreme. Men take side with one or 

 other branch of mental discipline, unconscious of the Nemesis which 

 waits on the divorce of literature from science, or of science from liter- 

 ature, forgetful of the fundamental truths that all minds require gen- 

 eral training up to a certain point, and that the period at which special 

 education should supervene is the problem which awaits solution. 



The hostility of the clergy ranks high among the difficulties we 

 have to recognize. To the gi-eat public schools this is matter of in- 

 difference ; but the vigorous head-master of a young and rising coun- 

 ty school, who attempts, being himself a clergyman, to make real 

 science compulsory in his school, is rattened by the vulgar heresy- 

 hunters, who swarm in every diocese. The hint and shrug in society, 

 the whisper at clerical conferences, the warning to parents attracted 



1 The bright radiance of ancient light. 



