4i6 



NATURE 



[January 24, 191; 



the awakened interest in art and science he left behind 

 him. They became scientific pioneers in African ex- 

 ploration, professors of philology, of Sanskrit, of Celtic 

 languages, of forestry, botany, zoology, chemistry, and 

 history. They excelled in Oriental studies, in botany, 

 and in chemistry, and rendered yeoman service to 

 British industrial and mental development. Most of 

 them are dead- — happily dead before this horrible war 

 revealed the dreadful, the unforgivably cruel side of 

 Imperial Germany. A few are pensioned off, but their 

 names are indelibly inscribed in the history of the 

 British Empire, if that history be truly written. A 

 few have returned to Germany. But never again, 

 within the lifetime of the youngest man present, shall 

 we send to Germany for instructors in any branch of 

 learning. 



Consequently, it is more than ever vitally necessary 

 that we should reorganise our education, and produce 

 as home-bred articles all the botanists, philologists, 

 foresters, zoologists, entomologists, chemists, astro- 

 nomers, translators of Oriental manuscripts, and musi- 

 cians we require for our home needs and for the Empire 

 dependent on our initiative. We shall not do this 

 efficiently with our existing ideals of education at the 

 great and small schools. 



But we require not only to train British biologists, 

 astronomers, ethnologists, philologists, historians, 

 chemists, and a hundred other diverse, types of special- 

 ists, but equally we need to give a glimmer, a general 

 idea of these branches of science to all the people of 

 the realm. Geography must bulk largely in popular 

 education; some idea should be given of the earth's 

 age and structure; elementary notions of astronomy, 

 zoology, and botany are highly necessary to the mental 

 equipment of the masses ; and ethnology is of equal 

 importance with geography. The history of Great 

 Britain and Ireland should be taught intelligibly and 

 truly, not in the Mrs. Markham style, nor with the 

 prejudices of Macaulay or Father Benson. Something 

 of human anatomy and much about the laws of health 

 should be in the curriculum of even 'the humblest 

 school. An elementary knowledge of arithmetic and 

 a thorough knowledge of the English language — its 

 origins, its right conventional pronunciation, and its 

 weird and wicked orthography ; an introduction to the 

 masterpieces of English literature; smatterings of 

 Latin, Greek, and French — sufficient to understand the 

 part these languages have played in the formation of 

 our vocabulary ; a generalised explanation of electricity 

 and the simplest and most Important facts of chem- 

 istry: these, it seems to me, with the teaching of a 

 good handwriting- and the clear expression of thoughts 

 on paper and a little freehand drawing, are the 

 essential subjects of the basic education which should 

 be given to every child in the kingdom between the 

 ages of six and fourteen. 



Building on such a base, we can then branch out 

 along the lines of specialist education : Shorthand, after 

 longhand ; the phonetic writing of English, after the 

 preposterous artificiality of conventional spelling; 

 foreign languages after our own ; drawing and paint- 

 ing for those who incline to the pictile arts ; music for 

 all who are musical ; anthropology and ethnology in 

 their diverse ramifications for the future traveller, 

 clergyman, administrator, or police-court magistrate; 

 geometry, geodesy, mechanics, hydrostatics, and 

 physics, and the higher mathematics for the pre- 

 destined surveyor, builder, engineer, or astronomer; 

 chemistry and agriculture, animal pathology for the 

 farmer-in-grain ; chemistry, again, and all the out- 

 growths of that mighty chapter in the New Bible for 

 the intended manufacturer and tradesman ; ballistics 

 for the cadet ; botany, entomology, sociology, modern 

 history, law, and languages for the future statesman ; 

 NO. 2517, VOL. 100] 



and the differential calculus for those who crave ;in 

 opportunity of applying it to some more practical pu 

 pose than merely passing as Senior Wrangler. 



Education, it seems to me, comes under three heads: 

 (i) That which deals with the necessities of man's bodv 

 —gymnastics, training of the eye and ear, the develop- 

 ment of the muscles, skill with weapons or utensil^, 

 the strengthening of the nerves, the making of eacli 

 girl and boy into as healthy and fit a member of thr 

 community as is possible; the teaching of all th.- 

 mechanical and constructive arts that go to feedin;^ 

 our bodies and minds, sheltering us, transporting us 

 from place to place, and clothing us. (2) That which 

 supplies the requirements of man's mind, all useful 

 learning regarding the past, the place of our plan- 

 in the Cosmos, the other forms of life that share i!; 

 earth with man, the interpretation of the great Neu 

 Bible— in short, the Book of the Earth— itself, which 

 we are just learning to read, and those other lesser 

 books, the products of the human mind ; not only the 

 documents left to us from the pre-Christian Mediter- 

 ranean world, but also the great literatures of India, uf 

 Scandinavia, of China and Japan, of Renascent Italy, 

 England, France, of the Aztecs in Mexico, and of the 

 Semitic and Hamitic peoples. (3) That of the educa- 

 tion of the soul. 



This last is a much-abused word, the precise mean- 

 ing of which no one can define to the liking of his 

 neighbour. It is the imponderable, " insaisissable," 

 imperishable spirit of the race which we also call 

 "character" and "disposition"; which is referred to 

 poetically as "heart" in contradistinction to "head." 

 It is almost universally agreed that the education of the 

 impressionable young cannot be confined to the cultiva- - \ 

 tion of muscles and the steadying of nerves, to the care of j 

 the teeth and the removal of adenoids, to the initiation 

 into the mechanical arts and the decorative arts; nor 1 , 

 to the filling of the mind with an encyclopaedia of use- 

 ful information. You have, in addition to caring for 

 mind and body, to impart such education as may — 

 here with great, there with only partial, success — turn 

 the raw material of your pupils into good men and ! 

 women, honest servants of the State, enthusiastic 

 patriots, and law-abiding citizens, obeying, however, 

 wise and humane laws which they are competent to 

 frame or to understand. 



Into this third great branch of education science, 

 founded on demonstrable truth, alone must enter; 

 superstition must be banned. The scientific basis and 

 authority for temperance and chastity must be ex- 

 plained ; children must be shown that wrongdoing 

 against one's self or the community does not pay in 

 the long run — 'that against one's own body and mind 

 it is rapidly punished ; that against the community not 

 onlv are there unpleasant consequences through the 

 enforcement of laws which we have made for the pro- 

 tection of the community, but also that the wrongdoer 

 himself would suffer in security and happiness were 

 there no such laws. 



THE METEOROLOGICAL RESOURCES OF 

 THE EM PI RE A 



IN many directions steps are being taken to sur- 

 vey the resources of the Empire and to plan 

 how these may best be utilised in the general recon- 

 struction which must undoubtedly be taken in hand 

 on the cessation of hostilities. In meteorology the 

 same should be done, for within the Empire we may 

 meet every type of climate. The great Overseas 

 Dominions, India, the Colonies, and especially th. 

 oceanic islands, not only afford the means for extend- 



1 Abstract of the presidential adr^ress delivered before the Royal Meteoro- 

 logical Society on Jaiiuary i6 by Ma'or H. G. Lyons, F.R.S. 



