THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION 



I KNOW quite well that launching myself into this 

 discussion is a very dangerous operation; that it is a 

 very large subject, and one which is difficult to deal 

 with, however much I may trespass upon your patience 

 in the time allotted to me. But the discussion is so 

 fundamental, it is so completely impossible to make up 

 one's mind on these matters until one has settled the 

 question, that I will even venture to make the experi- 

 ment. A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a 

 former age I mean Francis Bacon said that truth 

 came out of error much more rapidly than it came out 

 of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. 

 Next to being right in this world, the best of all things 

 is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will 

 come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between 

 right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come 

 out nowhere ; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly 

 and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, 

 have the extreme good fortune 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; 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. 



