CONCLUSION. 733 



and determined will at this time of temporary yet most severe 

 depression, despite the reiterated doctrines of pessimism — it will 

 ever be manifest that, however great have been the deeds done 

 in the past, their magnitude and importance are as nothing 

 when compared with the discoveries which await us. Realising 

 this, they will never stint any and every aid which they can 

 supply to those who are about to carry forward the same great 

 work in which they are themselves so nobly engaged, and they 

 will also try to atone for the slight loss which may here and 

 there perchance result from what may appear to be a too easy 

 learning of principles and facts which they, the teachers, had 

 necessarily greater difficulty in acquiring, by instilling even 

 more of that enthusiasm and love of the work and of the truth 

 than they themselves were always able to keep up. It must be 

 clear that, when those diBSculties which are avoidable have been 

 cleared from the path of the travellers, they will journey onwards 

 with a lighter heart and a freer step, and a greater power of 

 removing those obstacles which still stnnd so firmly, and so 

 mockingly embarrass man's best and most enduring efforts.. 

 For the workers of this and the next generation there are many 

 thorny thickets to be battled with and cut down with the sharp 

 and keen axe of the human intellect, aided in every possible 

 way that striving men can devise. If this applies to the cultured 

 worker, how much more does it affect our conceptions regarding^ 

 the teaching of the young ! 



** That there is very much room for improvement in current 

 methods and ideas relating to the great subject of education of 

 all classes and degrees of students, men seem to be universally 

 agreed. Above all things it is a most serious question if we are 

 right in these days in giving such decided preference to the 

 study of language, the organized embodiment of the symbols of 

 our thoughts, or whether we should not rather, in the first place, 

 impart instruction respecting those realities which underlie 

 words, the mere counters and representatives of things and of 

 thoughts. Surely, on reflection, it would rather be decided that, 

 inasmuch as words are, at best, but very imperfect modes of 

 expressing the things symbolised by them, the study of Nature 

 herself should be our primary and chief object. We ought, so 

 far as is possible, to have recourse to the study of natural 

 phenomena and natural objects themselves, to Nature's true 



