74 PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION 



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

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

 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 capitalised experience of the 

 human race Avhich we call knowledge of various kinds. 

 I am using the term knowledge in its widest possible 

 sense; and the question 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 

 the subjects of our thoughts all feelings and propo- 

 sitions (leaving aside our sensations as the mere mate- 

 rials 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 put into propositions and af- 

 firmed 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. 



According to the classification which I have put be- 

 fore you, then, the subjects of all knowledge are divisi- 

 ble into the two groups, matters of science and matters 

 of art ; for all things with which the reasoning faculty 

 alone is occupied, come under the province of science; 

 and in the broadest sense, and not in the narrow and 

 technical sense in which we are now accustomed to use 

 the word art, all things feelable, all things which stir 

 our emotions, come under the term of art, in the sense 

 of the subject-matter of the aesthetic faculty. So that 

 we are shut up to this that the business of education 

 is, in the first place, to provide the young with the 



