SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION IN GIRLS' SCHOOLS. 247 



To deprive letters of the too great place thej have hitherto held in 

 men's estimation, and to substitute other studies for these, is the 

 object of a sort of crusade with a body of people important in itself , 

 hut still more important because of the gifted leaders who march at 

 its head." The revolt here spoken of has certainly been accom- 

 plished and the changes inaugurated by it are fully in operation 

 to-day. Thoughtful people, however, are now beginning to ask them- 

 selves whether these changes have really been followed by the bene- 

 ficial results which Professor Huxley anticipated. And, if the intro- 

 duction of scientific training into school education is not fulfilling 

 the brilliant promise of its early years, what reason can be assigned 

 for its failure to do so The Italics in the passage just quoted from 

 Literature and Dogma are our OAvn, and they have been inserted in 

 order to call attention to words which are full of significance; for 

 they suggest, though perhaps unconsciously to their author, an ex- 

 planation of this very problem which confronts us to-day. The 

 principles leading to the introduction of the physical sciences into 

 school education proceeded, as was natural, from the "gifted leaders" 

 of whom Matthew Arnold speaks. Our present difficulty has arisen 

 from the fact that the execution of those principles has been carried 

 out by the followers in the crusade, who are, almost invariably, as far 

 from a right understanding of the cause which they support as was 

 the unreasoning multitude led forth by Peter the Hermit. In their 

 nineteenth-century ardor to see justice done to natural knowledge 

 they have approached Dame Science cap in hand, crying: " This 

 way, madam; every hill shall be made low, and every valley shall be 

 exalted for your feet," until our present position is akin to that which 

 Mr. Augustine Birrell tells we hold in regard to philosophy, and 

 which he illustrates by an anecdote very applicable to our present 

 purpose. There was once, he says, a native Westerner who paid a 

 first visit to the Eastern States, and described his impressions of 

 Boston to his friends upon his return. " It is a city," quoth this prod- 

 uct of Western civilization, " in which Respectability stalks un- 

 checked." According to Mr. Birrell, this is just what philosophical 

 theories are doing among us to-day, but the idea is capable of exten- 

 sion. We can now be convicted on another indictment: that of 

 having, so far at least as girls are concerned, permitted Science to 

 stalk unchecked through our so-called secondary schools. 



If we turn our attention to the details of scientific instruction 

 in these schools to-day, we shall find it is almost characteristic of one 

 which keeps abreast of the times that the natural sciences shall occupy 

 a large place in its curriculum. The branches generally taught are 

 physics, chemistry, physical geography, astronomy, botany, zoology, 

 and physiology. I am not now concerned with the injury done to 



