130 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: v 



seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves 

 and llowers in Lhe ground; and, 1 coni'ess, I should 

 very much like to turn it upside down, so that its 

 roots might be solidly embedded among the facts 

 of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for 

 the foliac^e and fruit of literature and of art. No 

 educational system can have a claim to perma- 

 nence, unless it recognises the truth that education 

 has two great ends to which everything else must 

 be subordinated. The one of these is to increase 

 knowledge; the other is to develop the love of 

 right and the hatred of wrong. 



"With wisdom and uprightness a nation can 

 make its way worthily, and beauty will follow in 

 the footsteps of the two, even if she be not specially 

 invited; wliile there is perhaps no sight in the 

 whole world more saddening and revolting than is 

 offered by men sunk in ignorance of everything but 

 what other men have written; seemingly devoid of 

 moral belief or guidance; but with the sense of 

 beauty so keen, and the power of expression so 

 cultivated, that their sensual caterwauling may be 

 almost mistaken for the music of the s})heres. 



At present, education is almost entirely devoted 

 to the cultivation of the power of expression, and 

 of the sense of literary beauty. The matter of 

 having anything to say, beyond a hash of other 

 people's opinions, or of possessing any criterion of 

 beauty, so that we may distinguish between the 

 Godlike and the devilish, is left aside as of no 



