at the Royal Institution, 1 900-1 907. 407 



In point of fact, the scientific amateur, who has been the glory 

 of our country in the past, seems to be in danger of submergence. 

 Some other influence than mere inertia is clearly at work, affecting 

 intelligence and actively degrading if not destroying it. There can 

 he little doubt that this is to be sought in two directions : in our 

 continued belief in classical study as an effective means of education 

 and in our insensate worship of examinations. The combined effect 

 of these two influences is undoubtedly to develop the passive habit 

 of mind and the belief in precedent — to cultivate the worst form of 

 mental inertia. 



The case was stated very clearly to the members of the Institution 

 on January 31, 1868, in a Friday evening discourse, by the Rev. F. W. 

 Farrar, M.A., F.R.S., then a classical master in Harrow School, after- 

 wards Dean Farrar. His words are so pregnant with meaning that 

 I feel impelled to quote them : — 



" So far from l)eing half finished, the real battle for educational reform 

 lias hardly begun. Latin and Greek still continue to be the all but ex- 

 clusive staple of our education and though a classical training conducted 

 on wise principles and witli reasonable methods is of the highest value, 

 yet the many and serious evils which our present system of it involves 

 have been resolutely ignored. The yoke of the Greek and Latin languages 

 have been made needlessly humiliating and needlessly heavy; taken 

 alone, it is doubtful whether they furnish the best mental discipline for 

 any but certain that they do not furnish even a good discipline for all ; 

 and they remain to this day entrenched behind a mountain-heap of 

 fallacies of which no small number ought to have l)een banished 

 ignominiously to the region of the most exploded errors. 



" But even if all the arguments in favour of a puiely classical educa- 

 tion were as tenable as half of them are fantastic, our present system of 

 it is a complete and disastrous failure ; and that it is so may 1 >e largely 

 demonstrated alike by the criticism of its enemies and the repeated con- 

 fessions of its friends. And if this lie so, it is our clear duty as English- 

 men, as patriots, nay even as mere honest men, to make that system 

 more worthy of its immense importance and of our national prestige. 



" It would be easy to adduce the testimony of many eminent scholars 

 to the humiliating ignorance on a multitude of subjects which has been 

 the inevitable result of years exclusively devoted to two dead languages ; 

 but the case of the vast majority of boys who do not become scholars in 

 any sense of the word is still more to be deplored. People read glowing 

 estimates of Greek and Roman literature and take them for a detence of 

 classical education. There could not be a greater delusion. Hundreds 

 of boys after years of expensive training know far less and have far less 

 culture than their sisters who have only had the modest aid of a single 

 governess. They know nothing except, perhaps, the merest and most 

 useless smattering of modern languages, of history, of mathematics or of 

 science; and if they want to pass in a competitive examination they 

 must be hastily sent to some professional tutor to have their minds 

 crammed for the purpose like a hurriedly-packed portmanteau. The 

 parent comforts himself that their education has been purely literary, 



