136 SELECTED ESSA YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



economy, a most essential, but hitherto sadly-neglected part 

 of elementary education, will develop in the university into 

 political economy, sociology, and law. Physical science 

 will have its great divisions of physical geography, with 

 -geology and astronomy; physics; chemistry and biology; 

 represented not merely by professors and their lectures, but 

 by laboratories, in which the students, under guidance of 

 demonstrators, will work out facts for themselves and come 

 into that direct contact with reality which constitutes the fun- 

 damental distinction of scientific education. Mathematics 

 will soar into its highest regions; while the high peaks 

 of philosophy may be scaled by those whose aptitude for 

 abstract thought has been awakened by elementary logic. 

 Finally, schools of pictorial and plastic art, of architecture, 

 and of music, will offer a thorough discipline in the principles 

 and practice of art to those in whom lies nascent the rare 

 faculty of aesthetic representation, or the still rarer powers of 

 creative genius. 



The primary school and the university are the alpha and 

 omega of education. Whether institutions intermediate 

 between these (so-called secondary schools) should exist, 

 appears to me to be a question of practical convenience. 

 If such schools are established, the important thing is that 

 they should be true intermediaries between the primary 

 school and the university, keeping on the wide track of gen- 

 eral culture, and not sacrificing one branch of knowledge 

 for another. 



Such appear to me to be the broad outlines of the rela- 

 tions which the university, regarded as a place of education, 

 ought to bear to the school, but a number of points of detail 

 require some consideration, however briefly and imperfectly 

 I can deal with them. In the first place, there is the impor- 

 tant question of the limitations which should be fixed to 



