SCIENCE' AND ART AND EDUCATION 171 



man. Artists are not made; they grow. You may improve 

 the natural faculty in that direction, but you cannot make 

 it; but you can teach simple drawing, and you will find it 

 an implement of learning of extreme value. I do not think 

 its value can be exaggerated, because it gives you the means 

 of training the young in attention and accuracy, which are 

 the two things in which all mankind are more deficient than 

 in any other mental quality whatever. The whole of my 

 life has been spent in trying to give my proper attention to 

 things and to be accurate, and I have not succeeded as 

 well as I could wish; and other people, I am afraid, are not 

 much more fortunate. You cannot begin this habit too 

 early, and I consider there is nothing of so great a value as 

 the habit of drawing, to secure those two desirable ends. 



Then we come to the subject-matter, whether scientific 

 or aesthetic, of education, and I should naturally have no 

 question at all about teaching the elements of physical 

 science of the kind I have sketched, in a practical manner; 

 but among scientific topics, using the word scientific in the 

 broadest sense, I would also include the elements of the 

 theory of morals and of that of political and social life, 

 which, strangely enough, it never seems to occur to anybody 

 to teach a child. I would have the history of our own 

 country, and of all the influences which have been brought 

 to bear upon it, with incidental geography, not as a mere 

 chronicle of reigns and battles, but as a chapter in the 

 development of the race, and the history of civilisation. 



Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and discipline, 

 we have happily in the English language one of the most 

 magnificent storehouses of artistic beauty and of models 

 of literary excellence which exists in the world at the present 

 time. I have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man 

 cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out of his 



