ii4 Selections from Huxley 



of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all 



straight again. So I will not trouble myself as to 



whether I may be right or wrong in what I am about to 



, say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite ; 



5 and then you will be able to judge for yourselves whether, 



in following out the train of thought I have to introduce, 



you knock your heads against facts or not. 



I take it that the whole object of education is, in the 

 first place, to train the faculties of the young in such a 



10 manner as to give their possessors the best chance of being 

 happy and useful in their generation; and, in the second 

 place, to furnish them with the most important portions of 

 that immense capitalized experience of the human race 

 which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am using the 



15 term knowledge in its widest possible sense ; and the ques- 

 tion is, what subjects to select by training and discipline, 

 in which the object I have just defined may be best 

 attained. 



I must call your attention further to this fact, that all 



20 the subjects of our thoughts all feelings and propositions 

 (leaving aside our sensations as the mere materials and 

 occasions of thinking and feeling), all our mental furniture 

 may be classified under one of two heads as either 

 within the province of the intellect, something that can be 



25 put into propositions and affirmed or denied ; or as within 

 the province of feeling, or that which, before the name was 

 defiled, was called the aesthetic side of our nature, and 

 which can neither be proved nor disproved, but only felt 

 and known. 



30 According to the classification which I have put before 

 you, then, the subjects of all knowledge are divisible into 

 the two groups, matters of science and matters of art ; for 

 all things with which the reasoning faculty alone is occu- 

 pied, come under the province of science ; and in the broad- 



