A LIBERAL EDUCATION 47 



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

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

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

 exposed to physical evils, and are more interested in remov- 

 ing 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-labourer, whose daily toil 

 lies among levers and pulleys; or among the other imple- 

 ments 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 which might be prevented. Not 

 only does our present primary education carefully abstain 

 from hinting to the workman 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 can, deaf to those who 

 could help him, and tries to substitute an Oriental submis- 

 sion 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 

 made to statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of 

 showing 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 educa- 

 tion do either the one or the other? If I am a knave or a 

 fool, teaching me to read and write won't make me less of 

 either one or the other — unless somebody shows me how 

 to put my reading and writing to wise and good purposes. 



Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no 

 use, because it could be proved statistically, that the per- 

 centage of deaths was just the same among people who had 



