Sir John F. W. Herschel’s Views on Public Education. 433 
guages, than is usually considered its due in our great public schools, 
where, in fact, the acquisition of the latter seems to be regarded as the 
one and only object of education. While on the other hand it would attach 
great importance to all those branches of practical and theoretical know- 
ledge whose possession goes to constitute an idea of a well-informed gen- 
tleman, as, for example—a knowledge of the nature and constitution of the 
world we inhabit—its animal, vegetable, and mineral productions, and 
their uses and properties as subservient to human wants. Its relation to 
the system of the universe, and its natural and political subdivisions; and 
last and most important of all, the nature and propensities of man himself, 
as developed in the history of nations and the biography of individuals ; 
the constitutions of human society, including our responsibilities to indi- 
viduals and to the social body of which we are members. In a word, as 
extensive a knowledge as can be grasped and conveyed in an elementary 
course of the actual system and laws of nature both physical and moral. 
Again, in a country where free institutions prevail, and where public 
opinion is of consequence, every man is to a certain extent a legislator; 
and for this his education (especially when the Government of the country 
lends its aid and sanction to it) ought at least so far to prepare him, as to 
place him on his guard against those obvious and popular fallacies which 
lie across the threshold of this as well as of every other subject with 
which human reason has anything to do. Every man is called upon to 
obey the laws, and therefore it cannot be deemed superfluous that some 
portion of every man’s education should consist in informing him what 
they are. On these grounds it would seem to me that some knowledge of 
the principles of political economy—of jurisprudence—of trade and manu- 
factures—is essentially involved in the notion of a sound education. A 
moderate acquaintance also with certain of the useful arts, such as prac- 
tical mechanics or engineering—agriculture—draftsmanship—is of obvious 
utility in every station of life ;—while in a commercial country the only 
remedy for that proverbial short-sightedness to their best ultimate interest. 
which is the misfortune rather than the fault of every mercantile commu-: 
nity upon earth, seems to be, to inculcate as a part of education, those broad 
principles of free interchange and reciprocal profit, and public justice, on 
which the whole edifice of permanently successful enterprise must be based. 
The exercise and development of our reasoning faculties is another grand 
object of education, and is usually considered, and in a certain sense justly, 
as most likely to be attained by a judicious course of mathematical in- 
struction—while it stands if not opposed to, at least in no natural con- 
nexion with, the formal and conventional departments of knowledge (such 
as grammar, and the so-called Aristotelian logic). It must be recollected, 
however, that there are minds which, though not devoid of reasoning pow- 
ers, yet manifest a decided inaptitude for mathematical studies, —which are 
estimative not calculating, and which are more impressed by analogies, and 
by apparent preponderance of general evidence in argument than by ma- 
thematical demonstration, where all the argument is on one side and no 
show of reason can be exhibited on the other. The mathematician listens 
only to one side of a question, for this plain reason, that no strictly mathe- 
matical question has more than one side capable of being maintained other- 
wise than by simple assertion; while all the great questions which arise 
in busy life and agitate the world, are stoutly disputed, and often with a 
show of reason on both sides, which leaves the shrewdest at a loss fora 
decision. 
This, or something like it, has often been urged by those who contend 
against what they consider an undue extension of mathematical studies in 
oumUniversities. But those who have urged the objection have stopped 
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Third Series. Vol. 8. No, 48. May 1836, 2X 
