Science and Art 121 



as you do to writing, depend upon it, there is nobody who 

 cannot be made to draw more or less well. Do not mis- 

 apprehend me. I do not say for one moment you would 

 make an artistic draughtsman. Artists are not made ; they 

 grow. You may improve the natural faculty in that 5 

 direction, but you cannot make it ; but you can teach simple 

 drawing, and you will find it an implement of learning of 

 extreme value. I do not think its value can be exag- 

 gerated, because it gives you the means of training the 

 young in attention and accuracy, which are the two things 10 

 in which all mankind are more deficient than in any 

 other mental quality whatever. The whole of my life has 

 been spent in trying to give my proper attention to things 

 and to be accurate, and I have not succeeded as well as I 

 could wish; and other people, I am afraid, are not much 15 

 more fortunate. You cannot begin this habit too early, 

 and I consider there is nothing of so great a value as 

 the habit of drawing, to secure those two desirable ends. 



Then we come to the subject-matter, whether scientific 

 or aesthetic, of education, and I should naturally have no 20 

 question at all about teaching the elements of physical 

 science of the kind I have sketched, in a practical manner; 

 but among scientific topics, using the word scientific in the 

 broadest sense, I would also include the elements of the 

 theory of morals and of that of political and social life, 25 

 which, strangely enough, it never seems to occur to any- 

 body to teach a child. I would have the history of our own 

 country, and of all the influences which have been brought 

 to bear upon it, with incidental geography, not as a mere 

 chronicle of reigns and battles, but as a chapter in the 30 

 development of the race, and the history of civilization. 



Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and discipline, 

 we have happily in the English language one of the most 

 magnificent storehouses of artistic beauty and of models of 



