SCIENCE TEACHING. 525 



up to the universities, and give to them in the main their own 

 uncultured tone. As it is from the universities that public school- 

 masters are for the most part drawn, the bar to improvement 

 seems strong indeed. One obvious way to break this vicious circle 

 lies, it is true, at hand. I can not consider it conveniently here, 

 and I am loath to touch upon it. But this much must be said : it 

 can not be for the welfare of any religious body that its highest 

 offices should be filled as often as they are from a class — the class 

 of head masters — which persistently and almost professionally 

 sets its face against natural knowledge. For it is thus a premium 

 is placed on one-sided and therefore imperfect culture at the very 

 fountain-head of education. Still more rarely can it be for the 

 advantage of a public school to be under the guidance of a mem- 

 ber of a class which has, speaking generally, consistently shown 

 both fear and dislike of Nature and her interpreters. Whatever 

 hope there may be in the future for relief in this matter, it is 

 probable that such relief will rather be effected from the outside 

 than from the inside. 



As to this influence from the outside, where shall we look for 

 it ? Clearly in the aspirations, ambitions, and discontents of the 

 better classes. The better classes are the more intelligent classes, 

 and these are, without any doubt whatever, formed from the 

 ranks of the artisan or handicraftsman — whether of our cities or 

 our fields — and especially from the ranks of those who have been 

 artisans or handicraftsmen, but whose ability has advanced them, 

 say, from the laborer to the farmer, from the carpenter to the 

 builder, from the nail-maker to the engineer, from the apprentice 

 on a barge to the captain of a " liner." It is here or hereabouts 

 that the very marrow of our nation lies. The aspirations of these 

 classes are opposed directly and indirectly by the more ignorant 

 classes both above and below them. The dangerous classes are 

 the idle classes of all ranks. He would do a far greater service 

 to the commonwealth who should give useful employment to the 

 idle rich than he who should sweep away a thousand slums. 



It is disastrous folly to fight against the inevitable. Science 

 will take, and is taking, its proper place in our system of educa- 

 tion. Men may bury themselves in the darkest crypts of igno- 

 rance ; they may raise the densest smoke of prejudice or spread 

 most diligently their little umbrellas of effeminacy, and fancy 

 they have shut out the sun from the whole earth. The contest, 

 if contest it can be called, which is waged against science, consists 

 of hysterical vituperation on the one hand, and mainly pity on 

 the other. Such a contest is only of passing interest, for the issue 

 admits of no doubt. On the side of our opponents there are, it is 

 true, the prejudices and ignorances of the half-cultured ; but on 

 the other there is the whole universe. They who oppose the in- 



