in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 37 



to solve a problem in conic sections who had merely been 

 taught the axioms and definitions of mathematical science? 



A workman has to bear hard labour, and perhaps 

 juivation, while he sees others rolling in wealth, and 

 feeding their dogs with what would keep his children 

 from starvation. Would it not be well to have helped 

 that man to calm the natural promptings of discontent 

 by showing him, in his youth, the necessary connexion 

 of the moral law which prohibits stealing with the 

 stability of society — by proving to him, once for all, that 

 it is better for his own people, better for himself, better 

 for future generations, that he should starve than steal ? 

 If you have no foundation- of knowledge, or habit of 

 thought, to work upon, what chance have you of persua- 

 ding a hungry man that a capitalist is not a thief " with 

 a circumbendibus ? ' And if he honestly believes that, of 

 what avail is it to quote the commandment against steal- 

 ing, when he proposes to make the capitalist disgorge ? 



Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the 

 history or the political organization of his own country. 

 His general impression is, that everything of much im- 

 portance happened a very long while ago ; and that the 

 Queen and the gentlefolks govern the country much 

 after the fashion of King David and the elders and 

 nobles of Israel — his sole models. Will you give a man 

 with this much information a vote % In easy times he 

 sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not ? It is of 

 about as much use to him as a chignon, and he knows as 

 much what to do with it, for any other purpose. In bad 

 times, on the contrary, he applies his simple theory of 

 government, and believes that his rulers are the cause of 

 his sufferings — a belief which sometimes bears remark- 

 able practical fruits. 



Least of all, does the child gather from this primary 

 " education " of ours a conception of the laws of the 



