A LIBERAL EDUCATION 39 



easy times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not ? 

 It is of about as much use to him as a chignon, and he knows 

 as much what to do with it, for any other purpose. In bad 

 times, on the contrary, he applies his simple theory of govern- 

 ment, and believes that his rulers are the cause of his suffer- 5 

 ings a belief which sometimes bears remarkable practical 

 fruits. 



Least of all, does the child gather from this primary 

 "education" of ours a conception of the laws of the physical 

 world, or of the relations of cause and effect therein. And 10 

 this is the more to be lamented, as the poor are especially 

 exposed to physical evils, and are more interested in removing 

 them than any other class of the community. If any one is 

 concerned in knowing the ordinary laws of mechanics one 

 would think it is the hand laborer, whose daily toil lies among 15 

 levers and pulleys ; or among the other implements of artisan 

 work. And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it 

 is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-prepared 

 food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad 

 drainage, and half whose children are massacred by disorders 20 

 which might be prevented. Not only does our present pri- 

 mary education carefully abstain from hinting to the work- 

 man that some of his greatest evils are traceable to mere 

 physical agencies, which could be removed by energy, patience, 

 and frugality ; but it does worse it renders him, so far as it 25 

 can, deaf to those who could help him, and tries to substitute 

 an Oriental submission to what is falsely declared to be the 

 will of God, for his natural tendency to strive after a better 

 condition. 



What wonder then, if very recently, an appeal has been 30 

 made to statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of show- 

 ing that education is of no good that it diminishes neither 

 misery, nor crime, among the masses of mankind? I reply, 

 why should the thing which has been called education do 



