Hill. — Technical and Scientific Training. 161 



of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all these still 

 carried away from them by men of lower condition who sur- 

 pass them in knowledge. They who are blind will always be 

 led by those who see, or else fall into the ditch ; and he is 

 certainly the most subjected, the most enslaved, who is so in 

 his understanding." 



It has been pointed out that there are two separate and 

 distinct branches of science — viz., natural and applied. 

 Herbert Spencer, in his " First Principles," when treating 

 of the law of evolution, remarks that at one time science was 

 in union with art, the handmaid of religion, then passing 

 through the era in which the sciences were so few and rudi- 

 mentary as to be simultaneously cultivated by the same 

 philosophers, and ending with the era in which the genera 

 and species are so numerous that few can enumerate them, 

 and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. 



Here, then, we are brought face to face with the inquiry 

 that if the genera and species of the sciences are so numerous, 

 how can a scheme of public education deal with a subject 

 so vast and so various in its aspects and ramifications ? 

 The Manual and Technical Instruction Act that was passed 

 in October, 1900, is made to form a "part of, and be read 

 together with, ' The Education Act, 1877.' ' On paper it 

 would seem that New Zealand has a scheme of public 

 education that provides for the primary and the manual 

 and technical instruction and training of the children in 

 the public schools. Admirable in themselves as these forms 

 of instruction appear, they represent what we have been 

 accustomed to so long — the product of inexperience and 

 immature thought. To read the regulations issued under the 

 Manual and Technical Act one would imagine New Zealand 

 to be an old-settled country with an immense urban popula- 

 tion engaged in a hard struggle to live, where necessity 

 has driven the authorities to introduce into the primary- 

 school course and into every aspect of school life as many 

 genera and species of science as are recognised in England 

 by the Science and Art Department. We are far from being 

 an industrial community, and of the bread-winners the pro- 

 fessional class numbers 23,509 ; domestic, 34,394 ; commer- 

 cial, 39,937; transport and communication, 21,750; agri- 

 cultural and pastoral, 111,921 ; whilst the industrial numbers 

 101,184. Of the professional class 6,026 are returned as 

 ministering to education, but how many of them are capable 

 of giving instruction in science except such as is obtainable 

 from books ? The fact is that our legislation on education 

 is fashionable, and presents to the world outside a semblance 

 of progress that facts do not warrant. 



Under section 84 of "The Education Act, 1877," eleven 

 11 



