ig2 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



too frequently the standard of the grown man, not only in regard to 

 matters of direct linancial moment, but in regard to almost every 

 occasion where a decision has to be made between the claims of 

 different courses of action or different habits of life. The value of 

 a course of education is determined by the degree of success with 

 which the product of it can amass the greatest quantity of material 

 wealth in the shortest possible time. No doubt, there was a period 

 in the old countries of Europe, when a course of education that in 

 itself had the main purpose of intellectual equipment of the highest 

 kind, was sometimes made subservient to success from a merely 

 material standpoint, and when there was much truth in the gibe that 

 " the advantages of a classical education were, that it would enable 

 you to despise your fellow-man, and to attain positions of considerable 

 emolument." But it cannot be said that there was much danger of 

 classical study ever leading to considerable emolument in South 

 Africa : Greek is already relegated to the few, and Latin stands in 

 some peril of being made " optional," to some subject of more readily 

 discernible profit. The difficulty throughout in this country has been 

 to arrive at any settled agreement as to what constitutes a satisfactory 

 intellectual equipment for life. Several factors have contributed to 

 this. The existence of a number of spoken languages with their 

 direct practical advantages has disguised the educational fact that a 

 man may be able to hold converse in their mother tongue with people 

 of several nationalities, and yet be a totally illiterate person, — that 

 is, he may possess but a limited vocabulary in any and fail to find 

 pleasure in the recognised literature of even one. 



Again, towards this instability of standard estimate, has contri- 

 buted the fact that so little weight in the determination has 

 proceeded from the fixed population in South Africa. The result 

 has been that each new nostrum produced in the intellectual or 

 ducational world elsewhere, has been exploited here, with more enthu- 

 siasm than discretion, and has wrought its destruction through excess, 

 some time after its crudeness has been exposed in more settled 

 communities. Notwithstanding the sad lessons of the past, it would 

 seem that the welcome given to each new fad is in proportion to 

 the clamour and assurance with which it is urged, and it is extra- 

 ordinary how ready is the acceptance of any theory that claims to 

 make for the lightening of mental effort in the learner, and the 

 avoidance of the horror of examinations ; and all this just as if the 

 world had not learnt that nothing worth winning can be won — 

 intellectually or otherwise — without hard effort. Various proposals 

 have been offered as to what constitutes a title to tl"ie name of 

 " cultured." Macaulay, in his usual extreme fashion, would restrict 

 it to " the man who can read his Plato with his toes on the fender." 

 nut the apparently humbler claim for " one who knows something of 

 everything and everything of something" seems to offer the more 

 suitable aim in this country where something of many things is too 

 frequently attained, but where thoroughness of any kind is so rare. 

 The spheres of ISTathematics and Science, while demanding intel- 



