15 



gauge its delights ! One of the first duties of every man — 

 apart from his pursuit in hfe — is to know something of where 

 he is as well as ivhat he is ; and this in plain words defines (in 

 its terrestrial relations), the whole realm of science. Students 

 of Ruskin will remember a pregnant passage on modern educa- 

 tion in one of the appendices to " The Stones of Venice." 

 Here are the words : — 



" Our present European system of so-called education 

 " ignores, or despises, not one, or the other, but all the 

 "three, of these great branches of human knowledge. 

 " First, it despises natural history. Until within the last 

 " year or two, the instruction in the physical sciences given 

 " at Oxford consisted of a course of twelve or fourteen 

 " lectures on the elements of mechanics or pneumatics, and 

 " permission to ride out to Shotover with the Professor 

 " of Geology. I do not know the specialities of the system 

 " pursued in the academies of the Continent, but their 

 " practical result is, that unless a man's natural instincts 

 " urge him to the pursuit of the physical sciences too 

 " strongly to be resisted, he enters into life utterly igno- 

 " rant of them. I cannot, within my present limits, even 

 " so much as count the various directions in which this 

 " ignorance does evil. But the main mischief of it is, that 

 " it leaves the greater number of men without the natural 

 " food which God intended for their intellects. For one 

 " man who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted 

 " for the study of things, and were intended to have a 

 " perpetual, simple and religious delight in watching the 

 " processes, or admiring the creatures of the natural 

 " universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure nothing is 

 " left to them but ambition or dissipation ; and the vices 

 " of the upper classes of Europe are, I believe, chiefly to 

 " be attributed to this single cause." 



(" S. of V,," vol. III., appendix 7). 



The study of God's creation in very truth is man's natural 

 food ; and no instrument to further this much-desired end 

 has ever been devised equal in importance to the compound 



