Science and Art 107 



hours of the night, in the bright dawn of a tropical 

 morning, when my comrades were yet asleep, when every 

 sound was hushed, except the little lap-lap of the ripples 

 against the sides of the boat, and the distant twitter of the 

 sea-bird on the reef. And when that vision crosses my 5 

 mind, I am free to confess I desire to be back in the boat 

 again. So that, if I share with those strange persons to 

 whose asserted, but still hypothetical existence I have re- 

 ferred, the want of appreciation of forms of culture other 

 than the pursuit of physical science, all I can say is, that 10 

 it is, in spite of my constitution, and in spite of my ex- 

 perience, that such should be my fate. 



But now let me turn to another point, or rather to two 

 other points, with which I propose to occupy myself. How 

 far does the experience of the last fourteen years justify 15 

 the estimate which I ventured to put forward of the value 

 of scientific culture, and of the share the increasing share 

 which it must take in ordinary education? Happily, in 

 respect to that matter, you need not rely upon my testi- 

 mony. In the last half-dozen numbers of the Journal of 20 

 Education, you will find a series of very interesting and 

 remarkable papers, by gentlemen who are practically en- 

 gaged in the business of education in our great public and 

 other schools, telling us what is doing in these schools, 

 and what is their experience of the results of scientific 25 

 education there, so far as it has gone. I am not going to 

 trouble you with an abstract of those papers, which are 

 well worth your study in their fullness and completeness, 

 but I have copied out one remarkable passage, because it 

 seems to me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly 30 

 ventured to say about the value of science, both as to its 

 subject-matter and as to the discipline which the learning 

 of science involves. It is from a paper by Mr. Worthing- 

 ton one of the masters at Clifton, the reputation of which 



