17i SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION. vu 



of error much more rapidly than it came out of 

 confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that say- 

 ing. Next to being right in this world, the best of 

 all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, be- 

 cause you will come out somewhere. If you go 

 buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating 

 and fiuctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you 

 are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently 

 wrong, you must, some of these days, have the ex- 

 treme good fortune of knocking your head against 

 a fact, and that sets you all straight again. So I 

 will not trouble myself as to whether I may be 

 right or wrong in what I am about to say, but at 

 any rate I hope to be clear and definite; and then 

 you will be able to judge for yourselves whether, 

 in following out the train of thought I have to in- 

 troduce, vou knock vour heads against facts or not. 



I take it that the whole object of education is, 

 in the first place, to train the faculties of the young 

 in such a manner as to give their possessors the 

 best chance of being happy and useful in their 

 generation; and, in the second place, to furnish 

 them with the most important portions of that 

 immense capitalised experience of the human race 

 which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am 

 using the term knowledge in its widest possible 

 sense; and the question is, what subjects to select 

 by training and discipline, in which the object I 

 have just defined may be best attained. 



I must call your attention further to this fact, 



