r IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 221 



this purpose than the Apollo Belvedere. The 

 plant is not expensive; and there is this excel- 

 lent quality about drawing of the kind indicated, 

 that it can be tested almost as easily and severely 

 as arithmetic. Such drawings are either right or 

 wrong, and if they are wrong the pupil can be 

 made to see that they are wrong. From the in- 

 dustrial point of view, drawing has the further 

 merit that there is hardly any trade in which the 

 power of drawing is not of daily and hourly util- 

 ity. In the next place, no good reason, except 

 the want of capable teachers, can be assigned why 

 elementary notions of science should not be an 

 element in general instruction. In this case, 

 again, no expensive or elaborate apparatus is ne- 

 cessary. The commonest thing a candle, a boy's 

 squirt, a piece of chalk in the hands of a teacher 

 who knows his business, may be made the starting- 

 point whence children may be led into the regions 

 of science as far as their capacity permits, with 

 efficient exercise of their observational and reason- 

 ing faculties on the road. If object lessons often 

 prove trivial failures, it is not the fault of object 

 lessons, but that of the teacher, who has not found 

 out how much the power of teaching a little de- 

 pends on knowing a great deal, and that thoroughly; 

 and that he has not made that discovery is not the 

 fault of the teachers, but of the detestable system 

 of training them which is widely prevalent.* 



* Training in the use of simple tools is no doubt very 

 desirable, on all grounds. From the point of view of 



