62 Selections from Huxley 



want to know, directly you leave school and enter upon 

 the practical business of life. You will in all probability 

 go into business, but you shall not know where, or 

 how, any article of commerce is produced, or the dif- 

 5 ference between an export or an import, or the meaning 

 of the word ' capital.' You will very likely settle in a 

 colony, but you shall not know whether Tasmania is part 

 of New South Wales, or vice versa. 



" Very probably you may become a manufacturer, but 

 10 you shall not be provided with the means of under- 

 standing the working of one of your own steam-engines, 

 or the nature of the raw products you employ; and, 

 when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have 

 the slightest means of judging whether the inventor is 

 15 an impostor who is contravening the elementary prin- 

 ciples of science, or a man who will make you as rich 

 as Croesus. 



" You will very likely get into the House of Commons. 

 You will have to take your share in making laws which 

 20 may prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men. 

 But you shall not hear one word respecting the political 

 organization of your country; the meaning of the con- 

 troversy between freetraders and protectionists shall never 

 have been mentioned to you; you shall not so much as 

 25 know that there are such things as economic laws. 



" The mental power which will be of most importance 

 in your daily life will be the power of seeing things as 

 they are without regard to authority; and of drawing 

 accurate general conclusions from particular facts. But 

 30 at school and at college you shall know of no source of 

 truth but authority; nor exercise your reasoning faculty 

 upon anything but deduction from that which is laid 

 down by authority. 



"You will have to weary your soul with work, and 



