SCIENCE TEACHING. 521 



become fine arts, that the greatest eagerness to learn, and the 

 greatest antipathy against learning, are manifested by the indi- 

 vidual. And it is for this that I should relegate such matters to 

 the later stages of a general education. 



When, accordingly, I shall have to advocate the introduction 

 of drawing into the very earliest stages of education, it will be 

 understood that I am not considering it then and there as a fine 

 art, but as a mere record of the perception of things. It is in re- 

 gard to subjects which involve taste that the course should be 

 least rigid. If the arithmetical course, for instance, were less 

 rigid, the parent might, indeed, be spared the ignominy of having 

 to confess to his child that he (the parent) does not know how 

 many pennyweights there are in a kilogramme. Think how we 

 parents have to shuffle, and how we scarcely recover our dignity 

 after we have, more or less clandestinely, referred to books. This 

 is bad. But, to my mind, it is far worse to have to listen to some 

 poor little mortal trying to acquire some one or two set pieces on 

 the piano, for hours daily, and for months yearly. And the ex- 

 cess of pain in the second case over that in the first is due not to 

 the fact that our own physical agony is greater than our moral 

 ignominy, but that in the second we see a long vista of hopeless 

 effort before the little victim. 



It is the legitimate boast of this country that the highest offices 

 of the state, excepting of course those pertaining to the throne, 

 are open to the child of the lowest birth or the deepest poverty. 

 It is as certainly one of the greatest scandals of the country that 

 such offices are open to and have often been held by persons of 

 the very lowest culture and ability. As long as this is so, as long 

 as a man may aspire to become, and actually become, a judge, a 

 bishop, an ambassador, a colonial governor, and yet be and re- 

 main on the whole an ignorant fellow, so long will the educa- 

 tional establishments, whether schools or colleges, in which such 

 persons have received their so-called educations, remain much as 

 they have been. 



Is it not rare to find an artist, either literary, pictorial, musi- 

 cal, or other, whose conversation does not bore you on account of 

 its narrowness ? Unquestionably this is so, and unquestionably 

 the best in each profession are the first to admit it. Even in a 

 profession such as that of medicine, where we have a right to ex- 

 pect to find at all events scientific culture, we find rarely anything 

 of the kind. Owing to the fact that the medical profession has 

 had for centuries our healths in its hand, the ignorant naturally 

 have recourse to the doctor in matters of health ; nay, are in a 

 manner compelled to do so. Accordingly, and for instance, you 

 find our vestrymen appointing as public analysts any kind of 

 broken-down medical man, who does not know one end of a test 



