vl. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
with very few to help and practically no scientific libraries 
it would be an almost impossible task, even if but one science 
were taken, to give a full and accurate review. 
I therefore chose a subject in which I have always 
taken a great deal of interest, and which I know is personally 
of very great interest indeed to many members of the 
Society, and also one which is of paramount importance ty 
Queensland. Unless the subject of education soon receives 
a great deal more attention than it has done in the past, 
this Society will have to finish its existence. To realise this 
one has only to look at the list of names of contributors to 
the Proceedings, when it is seen that the native-born is con- 
spicuous by his absence. This is not as it should be but 
it is a natural corollary to the present absence of any system 
of education in Queensland. 
Before putting forward my views as to the directions 
in which f think we ought to proceed in our efforts to estab- 
lish a system of education here, it would be well to take a 
rapid general view of the subject to see what has been done 
elsewhere in the past. 
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of a com- 
plete educational system to a nation. As Haldane says, 
‘* Educate your people, and you have reduced to compara- 
tively insignificant dimensions the problems of temperance, 
of housing and of raising the condition of your masses. 
These things solve themselves if you onty yet the right spirit 
into your people,’ Many other thinkers have put the 
maiter in a similarly strong way. 
A nation’s educational standard of to-day determines 
that nation’s moral, literary and commercial standing of 
a few years after. To those who have studied the question, 
that is obvious, but unfortunately at no time has any Govern- 
ment in Queensland realised it. Yet far back in the world’s 
history, centuries before the time of the Greeks, it was recog- 
nised by the thinkers that the national life was merely that 
of an aggregation of units—the higher and better the position 
of each unit, the higher and better must be the general status 
of the whole community. The most obvious method then 
to raise the nation to a high position was to train the children 
to reach what those in authority considered the highest 
‘type of man. 
