Phksidknt's Address — Sect. E. 289 



For what lia\(' tlie facts of natural selection taught save that life 

 is a stiuijiiU' in whifh onlv the best survive ; that just as the individual 

 weakling, physical, mental or moral, must go under in the struggle, so 

 with the nations the race is' to the swift and the battle to the strong ; 

 that in the march of the peoples no mere traditions of inherited great- 

 ness suffice to bring the victory ; that in the battle of the nations only 

 the fittest can hope to win ? Ts not the greatest (nlucational lesson of 

 the close of the nineteenth century that all the forces of science must 

 be brought to bear on the evolution of such a national system of educa- 

 tion as shall promote that intellectual predominance which may make 

 us either best or equal with the best? 



Then, as if more clearly to point the moral, there followed on the 

 new impulse given to science by the discoveries of Darwin the develop- 

 ment of a tremendous commercial conHict. Hitherto from her peculiar 

 ad\'antages and the long start she had had in the commercial race, 

 England had barely felt this. AVith the increased competition, how- 

 ever, caused by the rapid de\elopment of commerce in the United 

 States and in Germany — a de\elopment, it is to be noticed, in each 

 case following on closei' political union — she found herself in danger 

 of losing her commercial and industrial predominance. Reform or 

 defeat were the alternatives, and even if the reform were unscientific 

 and desultory, the result of individual and dispersed efibrt rather than 

 of concentrated intelligence, it has accomplished much in the way of 

 improved jnethods and ideals and in the strengthening of the belief 

 that in the instruction of the young lies the root of all national 

 6^ciency. Yet it is only a few years since the first connnercial college • 

 was opened at Birmingham, and Oxford University is still calling for 

 funds to bring itself up to date. 



AA'hile, then, the cause of scientific education has hardly kept 

 pace with the progress of the individual sciences, it is idle to deny 

 the great progress that has been made. We are no longer satisfied 

 to commit the training of so delicate an organism as the young 

 mind to persons devoid of either academic or professional quali- 

 fications. This is, of course, still lamentably the position of a large 

 number of South African teachers, over 40 per cent, of whom have 

 no qualifications whatever, while a much larger percentage have 

 most indifferent ones. It is nevertheless an admitted misfortune, and 

 all tendencies of the day are in the direction of impi-ovement. In- 

 creasing importance is being attached to professional training, for the 

 teacher is (unlike the poet) not born, but made, and a senioi- wrangler 

 is not necessarily a mathematical tutor. Our curriculum has been 

 broadened, the traditions of the classical school have been broken 

 through in so far as they tended to make the study of living tongues 

 run parallel with that of dead languages. We are by way of 

 abandoning methods — if they can so be called — by which it was 

 possible for boys to study French and German for five years, and 

 leave schotd unable to write a letter or engage in even the simplest 

 conversation in either. 



The sciences have contributed much with so-called "heuristic" 



