354 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



reverence and noble truthfulness ought to be the 

 feelings evoked, it is that of the principal of a school. 

 When a man of enlarged heart and mind comes among 

 boys, when he allows his spirit to stream through 

 them, and observes the operation of his own character 

 evidenced in the elevation of theirs, it would be idle 

 to talk of the position of such a man being honourable. 

 It is a blessed position. The man is a blessing to 

 himself and to all around him. Such men, I believe, 

 are to be found in England, and it behoves those who 

 busy themselves with the mechanics of education at 

 the present day, to seek them out. For no matter 

 what means of culture may be chosen, whether physical 

 or philological, success must ever mainly depend upon 

 the amount of life, love, and earnestness, which the 

 teacher himself brings with him to his vocation. 



Let me again, and finally, remind you that the claims 

 of that science which finds in me to-day its unripened 

 advocate, are those of the logic of Nature upon the reason 

 of her child that its disciplines, as an agent of culture, 

 are based upon the natural relations subsisting between 

 Man and the universe of which he forms a part. On 

 the one side, we have the apparently lawless shifting of 

 phenomena ; on the other side, mind, which requires 

 law for its equilibrium, and through its own indestruc- 

 tible instincts, as well as through the teachings of 

 experience, knows that these phenomena are reducible 

 to law. To chasten this apparent chaos is a problem 

 which man has set before him. The world was built in 

 order : and to us are trusted the will and power to 

 discern its harmonies, and to make them the lessons of 

 our lives. From the cradle to the grave we are sur- 

 rounded with objects which provoke inquiry. Descend- 

 ing for a moment from this high plea to considerations 

 which lie closer to us as a nation as a land of gas 



" 



