ESSAYS 475 



make him a good citizen and a useful citizen. Every study that is retained 

 or that is introduced into the curriculum must be able to establish its claims 

 on these grounds. We shall not accomplish reform simply by resolving to 

 give so many hours more to natural science, or so many hours less to Greek. To 

 make the whole of education scientific we must give it order and direction from 

 beginning to end. When we say that the object of education is to train a child 

 for its future work in life, this does not mean the stunting of education by limiting 

 it, e.g. to bookkeeping and shorthand, on the plea that the boy is probably going 

 to undertake a commercial career. The essential part of every man's work in the 

 world is that of a member of a self-governing community, and the training for his 

 political life is as important to the State as the training for his future vocation or 

 handicraft. Any education drawn up with regard to the future career of a child 

 dare not be narrow either on the literary or scientific side or lacking in the 

 formation of character, without enslaving the individual by compelling him to 

 adhere closely to the occupational rut in which he is first placed. It is essential 

 that a certain liberty of choice of occupation be rendered possible, so that any man 

 may be able to change the direction of his activities if, in the course of develop- 

 ment, he finds new interests and talents other than those adapted to the occupation 

 for which he was first designed. But the constant question of the parent, " What 

 is the use of this to my boy?" is justifiable, and the schoolmaster should be able 

 to give a satisfactory answer on this point with regard to every hour that the boy 

 spends under his charge. 



In urging the introduction of science and of scientific method into education I 

 would insist once again that science is nothing more than the practical experience 

 of mankind throughout all ages, ordered and classified. Science represents, 

 therefore, the eyes of mankind, by using which men may acquire wisdom and gain 

 foresight. A nation without science, like a blind man, must stumble at every 

 obstacle which it meets, thereby falling behind in the race for existence. A 

 reform of our school curriculum by the introduction of natural science as a com- 

 pulsory study into our schools will not give us this power of foresight, unless we 

 can change at the same time our national attitude towards knowledge and the 

 spirit in which knowledge is imparted in our schools. England has always 

 possessed men distinguished in science, but science as a whole she has starved 

 and neglected. She has preferred to run in the blinkers of the practical man, 

 and has made no effort to establish the necessary connection between the eyes 

 and the brain, between those who have knowledge and those who are entrusted 

 with the direction of her affairs. But the young men of to-day are the leaders of 

 to-morrow ; and, if only we can change the spirit of our education, we may look to 

 them for a new era of national life and for a vindication of the claim of democracy 

 to survive as a permanent and dominant type of society. 



PHYSICAL RELATIVITY HYPOTHESES OLD AND NEW 



(G. W. de Tunzelman) 



The Relativity Hypothesis, also known as the Relativity Principle, which has 

 recently been developed into a far-reaching theory, has been a subject of con- 

 troversy and ever-increasing interest amongst physicists for about a quarter of a 

 century. It originated in the failure of the celebrated Miche'lson-Morley experi- 

 ment, made in the year 1887, to obtain evidence of the motion of the earth through 

 the ether of space. 



The general principles of the universally accepted Faraday-Maxwell repre- 



