78 PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION 



monises with the ripest and richest experience of the 

 oldest. 



I have said this much to draw your attention to what, 

 in my mind, lies at the root of all this matter, and at the 

 understanding of one another by the men of science on 

 the one hand, and the men of literature, and history, 

 and art, on the other. It is not a question whether one 

 order of study or another should predominate. It is a 

 question of what topics of education you shall select 

 which will combine all the needful elements in such due 

 proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, sup- 

 port, and encouragement to those faculties which en- 

 able us to appreciate truth, and to profit by those 

 sources of innocent happiness which are open to us, and, 

 at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, 

 and ugly, and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls 

 and dangers which beset those who break through the 

 natural or moral laws. 



I address myself, in this spirit, to the consideration 

 of the question of the value of purely literary education. 

 Is it good and sufficient, or is it insufficient and bad ? 

 Well, here I venture to say that there are literary educa- 

 tions and literary educations. If I am to understand by 

 that term the education that was current in the great 

 majority of middle-class schools, and upper schools 

 too, in this country when I was a boy, and which con- 

 sisted absolutely and almost entirely in keeping boys 

 for eight or ten years at learning the rules of Latin and 

 Greek grammar, construing certain Latin and Greek 

 authors, and possibly making verses which, had they 

 been English verses, would have been condemned as 

 abominable doggerel, if that is what you mean by 

 liberal education, then I say it is scandalously insuffi- 

 cient and almost worthless. My reason for saying so 



