BIOL OGY IX ED UCA TIOX. 23 



ing of the school. As professedly giving to the child what 

 will stand it in best stead on its entry into the world at large, 

 educationists, I think, are bound to regulate their work and 

 labour in sympathy with its future life and interests. It is 

 exactly this want of connecting sympathy in modern educa- 

 tion, this break of continuity between the education of the 

 school and that of the world, that, in my opinion, most 

 clearly shows our need of biological training. I look in vain 

 in the list of ordinary school-studies ; I seek vainly to recall 

 in my own school history any study, save perhaps that of 

 English literature, which can carry the pupil in healthy sym- 

 pathy from his school directly into the arena of active life. 

 The study of the lives and works of great writers undoubtedly 

 connect the young with the history and doings of their own 

 and of other days, but in an indirect and abstract manner 

 only. Our ordinary modern list of school studies is thus 

 almost as deficient in truly humanising resources as was 

 the educational repertoire of the ancient Greek. The edu- 

 cation of Alcibiades, as described by Socrates, consisted of 

 letters reading and writing wrestling, and music. I can 

 discern in the modern category of ordinary school resources 

 but little, if any, advance on the philological, caligraphic, 

 gymnastic, and musical pursuits of the ancient Greek. The 

 wisdom of the ancient educator consisted in the endeavour 

 to make his pupils really learn the few subjects he possessed. 

 From the multiplicity of our modern subjects, we can only 

 make an attempt to master them. And it is to be noted 

 that amongst all this multiplicity, entailing a too powerful 

 strain upon the intellect of the average pupil, we have not 

 one study which has any power or charm to weld together 

 the school with the world to bridge over the gulf which, 

 strangely enough, should be regarded as existing between 

 the battle-field of life and the armoury in which the weapons 

 we therein use are forged. 



If, however, the study of life-science has one prominent 

 advantage over all other studies, it is that in its nature it acts 

 most powerfully in bringing the present world and its con- 



