NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 123 



they have acquainted themselves with the conditions of the 

 special problem. 



That is what I understand by scientific education. To 

 furnish a boy with such an education, it is by no means 

 necessary that he should devote his whole school existence to 

 physical science: in fact, no one would lament so one-sided 

 a proceeding more than I. Nay more, it is not necessary 

 for him to give up more than a moderate share of his time 

 to such studies, if they be properly selected and arranged, 

 and if he be trained in them in a fitting manner. 



I conceive the proper course to be somewhat as follows. 

 To begin with, let every child be instructed in those general 

 views of the phenomena of Nature for which we have no 

 exact English na^e. The nearest approximation to a name 

 for what I mean, which we possess, is "physical geography." 

 The Germans have a better, ''Erdkunde" ("earth knowl- 

 edge" or " geology " in its etymological sense), that is to say, a 

 general knowledge of the earth, and what is on it, in it, and 

 about it. If any one who has had experience of the ways of 

 young children will call to mind their questions, he will 

 find that so far as they can be put into any scientific cate- 

 gory, they come under this head of "Erdkunde." The 

 child asks, "What is the moon, and why does it shine?" 

 " What is this water, and where does it run ? " " What is the 

 wind?" "What makes this wave in the sea?" "Where 

 does this animal live, and what is the use of that plant?" 

 And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask 

 foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving 

 of a young child; nor any bounds to the slow, but solid, 

 accretion of knowledge and development of the thinking 

 faculty in this way. To all such questions, answers which are 

 necessarily incomplete, though true as far as they go, may 

 be given by any teacher whose ideas represent real knowledge 



