302 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



lowering the moral tone and exciting irreverence and 

 cunning where reverence and noble truthfulness ought 

 to be the feelings evoked, it is that of the principal of 

 a school. When a man of enlarged heart and mind 

 comes among boys, when he allows his spirit to 

 stream through them, and observes the operation of 

 his own character evidenced in the elevation of theirs, 

 it would be idle to talk of the position of such a man 

 being honourable. It is a blessed position. The man 

 is a blessing to himself and to all around him. Such 

 men, I believe, are to be found in England, and it be- 

 hoves those who busy themselves with the mechanics 

 of education at the present day, to seek them out. For 

 no matter what means of culture may be chosen, 

 whether physical or philological, success must ever 

 mainly depend upon the amount of life, love, and 

 earnestness, which the teacher himself brings with him 

 to his vocation. 



Let me again, and finally, remind you that the 

 claims of that science which finds in me to-day its un- 

 ripened advocate, are those of the logic of Nature upon 

 the reason of her child that its disciplines, as an 

 agent of culture, are based upon the natural relations 

 subsisting between Man and the universe of which he 

 forms a part. On the one side, we have the apparently 

 lawless shifting of phenomena; on the other side, 

 mind, which requires law for its equilibrium, and 

 through its own indestructible instincts, as well as 

 through the teachings of experience, knows that these 

 phenomena are reducible to law. To chasten this ap- 

 parent chaos is a problem which man has set before 

 him. The world was built in order: and to us are 

 trusted the will and power to discern its harmonies, 

 and to make them the lessons of our lives. From the 

 cradle to the grave we are surrounded with objects 



