100 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [VL 



should be the first person to protest against your being en 

 couraged to do anything of the kind. 



But is it true that the acquisition of such a knowledge of 

 science as is proposed, and the communication of that knowledge, 

 are calculated to weaken your usefulness ? Or may I not rather 

 ask, is it possible for you to discharge your functions properly 

 without these aids ? 



What is the purpose of primary intellectual education ? I 

 apprehend that its first object is to train the young in the 

 use of those tools wherewith men extract knowledge from the 

 ever-shifting succession of phenomena which pass before their 

 eyes; and that its second object is to inform them of the 

 fundamental laws which have been found by experience to 

 govern the course of things, so that they may not be turned 

 out into the world naked, defenceless, and a prey to the events 

 they might control. 



A boy is taught to read his own and other languages, in 

 order that he may have access to infinitely wider stores of 

 knowledge than could ever be opened to him by oral intercourse 

 with his fellow men ; he learns to write, that his means of 

 communication with the rest of mankind may be indefinitely 

 enlarged, and that he may record and store up the knowledge 

 he acquires. He is taught elementary mathematics, that he 

 may understand all those relations of number and form, upon 

 which the transactions of men, associated in complicated 

 societies, are built, and that he may have some practice in 

 deductive reasoning. 



All these operations of reading, writing, and ciphering, are 

 intellectual tools, whose use should, before all things, be learned, 

 and learned thoroughly; so that the youth may be enabled to 

 make his life that which it ought to be, a continual progress in 

 learning and in wisdom. 



But, in addition, primary education endeavours to fit a boy 

 out with a certain equipment of positive knowledge. He is 

 taught the great laws of morality ; the religion of his sect ; so 

 much history and geography as will tell him where the great 



