!.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 31 



great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her 

 operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, 

 but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous 

 will, the servant of a tender conscience ; who has learned to love 

 all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and 

 to respect others as himself. 



Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal 

 education ; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony 

 with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. 

 They will get on together rarely : she as his ever beneficent 

 mother ; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister 

 and interpreter. 



Where is such an education as this to be had ? Where is 

 there any approximation to it ? Has any one tried to found 

 such an education ? Looking over the length and breadth of 

 these islands, I am afraid that all these questions must receive 

 a negative answer. Consider our primary schools, and what is 

 taught in them. A child learns : 



1. To read, write, and cipher, more or less well; but in a 

 very large proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in 

 reading, or to be able to write the commonest letter properly. 



2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the child, nine 

 times out of ten, understands next to nothing. 



3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall with it, 

 a few of the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, 

 to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the 

 story of the fall of the apple in Newton s garden, an integral 

 part of the doctrine of gravitation, and teach it as of equal 

 authority with the law of the inverse squares. 



4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geography, 

 and perhaps, a little something about English history and the 

 geography of the child s own country. But I doubt if there 

 is a primary school in England in which hangs a map of the 

 hundred in which the village lies, so that the children may 

 be practically taught by it what a map means. 



