318 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



natural science and in the relegation of moral or religious teaching 

 to a comparatively secondary place. 



We have been led on in order to complete the story of de 

 Saussure's educational activity. I return to 1774 to record the 

 fact that he was in that year proposed by Lord Mahon and elected 

 a member of a newly founded English Club, which met every 

 Saturday for discussions carried on in our language. 



Next year (1775), undeterred by his repulse, de Saussure again 

 attacked the education in vogue. In his capacity of Rector he 

 gave at the Annual ' Promotions,' or prize-day of the College, a 

 lecture ' On the Neglect of Athletics and the pampered Bringing -up 

 of the Young.' 1 He wrote to Haller that he had also furnished a 

 programme of the proceedings in verse ! This has not survived. 

 The only other occasion on which there is any record of his having 

 yielded to the Genevese habit of rhyming is in some playful lines 

 written in the previous year (1774) for his elder son's seventh 

 birthday. They prove him a wise father, if but an indifferent poet. 



At this date de Saussure was acting as Curator of the Town 

 Library, and we find him thanking Lord Stanhope for a hand- 

 some present of books. Throughout his career he was con- 

 tinually being called on to take up posts demanding a certain 

 amount of practical ability and sacrifice of time, and he seems 

 readily to have responded to the claims made on him. 



Thwarted in his effort to improve and enlarge at its source the 

 public education of Geneva, de Saussure turned his mind and 

 energy to a more indirect method which might serve the double 

 object of bringing the different classes and avocations, men of 

 science and artists, employers and workmen, into closer relation, 

 and at the same time of raising the general intellectual and artistic 

 level. He conceived the plan of a popular Society of Arts, that 

 should combine the efforts of the more enlightened members of 

 every class in the community in a general endeavour to set before 

 their fellows a high standard in all things, and more particularly to 

 promote the application of science to industry, and of art to 

 manufactures and daily lif e . He was fortunate in securing at the 



1 Rousseau, in his Lettre ct d'Alembert, insists on this defect in the training 

 of the youth of Geneva. ' Boys are brought up like women : they are guarded 

 from the sun, the wind, the rain, and dust, so that they lose all power of endur- 

 ance. They are forbidden any exercise, etc.' (See also d'lvernois, Revolutions 

 de Qen&ve.) 



