42 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and colonists the 

 world has ever seen, are precisely the middle classes of this 

 country. If there be a people which has been busy making 

 history on the great scale for the last three hundred years 

 5 and the most profoundly interesting history history which, 

 if it happened to be that of Greece or Rome, we should study 

 with avidity it is the English. If there be a people which, 

 during the same period, has developed a remarkable literature, 

 it is our own. If there be a nation whose prosperity depends 



10 absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the forces of 

 Nature, upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience 

 to, the laws of the creation and distribution of wealth, and of 

 the stable equilibrium of the forces of society, it is precisely 

 this nation. And yet this is what these wonderful people tell 



15 their sons : 



"At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard earned 

 money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your lives to school. 

 There you shall toil, or be supposed to toil ; but there' you shall not learn 

 one single thing of all those you will most want to know, directly you leave 



20 school and enter upon the practical business of life. You will in all prob- 

 ability go into business, but you shall not know where, or how, any article 

 of commerce is produced, or the difference between an export or an im- 

 port, or the meaning of the word ' capital.' You will very likely settle 

 in a colony, but you shall not know whether Tasmania is part of New 



25 South Wales, or vice versa. 



"Very probably you may become a manufacturer, but you shall 

 not be provided with the means of understanding the working of one 

 of your own steam engines, or the nature of the raw products you employ ; 

 and, when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest 



30 means of judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contra- 

 vening the elementary principles of science, or a man who will make you 

 as rich as Croesus. 



"You will very likely get into the House of Commons. You will 

 have to take your share in making laws which may prove a blessing or a 



35 curse to millions of men. But you shall not hear one word respecting 

 the political organization of your country; the meaning of the con- 

 troversy between freetraders and protectionists shall never have been 



