22 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



all questionings of this kind there is but one reply. We 

 work for culture. We work to enlarge the intelligence, and 

 to make it a better and more effective instrument." And 

 he wisely adds : "It is always difficult to say beforehand 

 exactly what will turn out in the end to be most useful." 



I am afraid a chief element in the work of the educa- 

 tional reformers of modern times must consist in the task 

 of showing the actual need of science-culture to those who 

 might be expected to know fully and well the benefits and 

 advantages of such studies. That the educational leaven 

 has much hard work yet before it, ere ignorance in the lump 

 be wholly leavened, is self-evident. And that the leaven of 

 the future will be chiefly scientific in its character, is a pre- 

 diction which the present aspect of educational matters and 

 the spirit and tendency of the age together give full warrant 

 for stating boldly. If we think of the rapid and astonishing 

 extension of scientific tastes, knowledge, and appliances, 

 which has taken place within even the past few years, it will 

 readily be owned that the demands of modem culture at 

 least, will insist on the distinct incorporation of the scientific 

 element into the body educational. That boys or girls 

 should leave school ignorant of the grand facts of biology ; 

 unable to give any intelligent account of the constitution 

 of the world in which they live, and unlearned in the 

 phenomena of their own existence, is a fact in the present 

 history of education for which the future will have good 

 cause to blush. The ordinary modern school-boy or school- 

 girl, I make bold to say, leaves school, in the majority of 

 cases, as liable to drift into errors, moral and physiological, 

 as did his or her predecessor of fifty years ago. And hence 

 the growth to manhood or womanhood proceeds, without 

 adding to the knowledge of school-days any other than may 

 be purchased in the battle of life, sometimes at the highest 

 and dearest price which experience can pay. The errors of 

 life and thought ; the abuse of foods and drinks ; much of 

 the vice and immorality of modern times, represent, I think, 

 in greater part, so many consequences of the deficient train-- 



