4i8 



NATURE 



[July 20, 1916 



laws of Nature, under which 1 include, not merely 

 things and their forces, but men and their ways; 

 and the fashioning of the affections and of the 

 will into an earnest and living desire to move in 

 harmony with those laws. For me education 

 m.£ans neither more nor less than this. Anything 

 which professes to call itself education must be 

 tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the 

 test, I will not call it education, whatever may 

 be the force of authority or of numbers on the 

 other side. 



This is how the question stands to-day, and it 

 will be strange — not to say tragical- — if it be not 

 possible for the leaders of the nation, in view of 

 the tremendous issues which lie before us, to devise 

 the means of solving it without further delay so 

 as to set up as "the ideal of a national educa- 

 tional system an organisation giving every single 

 individual a chance to attain to a maximum of 

 personal culture and social efficiency according to 

 his natural gifts and the strength of his will." 



Lord Cromer, in a speech following Lord 

 Haldane's, remarked of Germany that "side by 

 side with a great advance in national prosperity 

 and scientific knowledge there had been a vast 

 deterioration of character " ; and he feared the 

 same moral collapse for us "if not sufficient 

 attention was paid to humanistic, particularly 

 classical, education in this country." The associa- 

 tion of science with crass materialism, and the 

 suggestion that we must look to classical educa- 

 tion to preserve our national character, are both 

 presumptuous and misleading. Lord Cromer must 

 know that until after the year 1900 the only way 

 of access to the university in Germany was through 

 the Gymnasium with a nine years' Latin course 

 and a six years' Greek course. It would be more 

 accurate, therefore, to seek the origins of the 

 present war and of German barbarisms in classical 

 education rather than in that of science. The diplo- 

 matists and statesmen who are responsible for the 

 war have, almost without exception, been trained 

 on classical lines ; and they have called in the aid 

 of forces provided by science, which mvist, how- 

 ever, not be made responsible for the ignoble 

 uses to which its knowledge is put. Men who 

 have had a scientific education have answered 

 their country's call, and made the supreme sacri- 

 fice, just as readily as those trained in classical 

 schools. To suggest that the British nature and 

 the noblest characteristics of " an English gentle- 

 man " must have the flimsy classical teaching of 

 public schools to cultivate them is a fallacy which 

 will not bear a moment's serious consideration. 



Lord Cromer's speech is just such a one as 



might have been made in supjX)rt of Latin as a 



humanising influence, when, at the Renaissance, 



the humanists of that time were urging the intro- 



NO. 2438, VOL. 97] 



duction of Greek into the curriculum. In those 

 days the humanists were on the side of the nev^ 

 learning, but now they range themselves against 

 it, forgetting that education must take account 

 of the demands and tendencies of the day. When 

 placing utilitarianism in contrast with literary 

 studies, and science against spirituality, it should 

 be borne in mind by advocates of established 

 methods that, at the time when the foundations 

 of classical education were laid, Latin and Greek 

 had a very definite utilitarian object — one as the 

 international language of the learned, the other 

 as the storehouse of mathematical and scientific 

 knowledge. 



The time is ripe for a great and fundamental 

 change in our methods and means of education. 

 Modern needs demand not only that science and 

 scientific training should be given their rightful 

 and due place in the curricula of all grades of 

 schools and in the universities, but also the aboli- 

 tion of all restrictions which prevent the children 

 of the nation from the enjoyment of school-life 

 until fourteen years of age. Part-time instruction 

 should be arranged within the normal hours of 

 labour for those who have left school until the 

 end of the seventeenth year at least, and, lastly, 

 the status and rewards of the teacher should 

 be raised and made more attractive. The 

 Promised Land is in sight, and must be won. It 

 lies with our statesmen to give effect to these 

 imperative claims and so provide for the best 

 development of the Empire. 



THEORY OF CALCULATION. 



Theory of Measurements : a Manual for Physics 

 Students.. By Prof. J. S. Stephens. Pp. vii-i- 

 81. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1915.) 

 Price 6s. net. 



A NATURAL but erroneous impression pro- 

 duced by the title of this book, "Theory of 

 Measurements : a Manual for Physics Students," 

 is that it has to do with apparatus such as is 

 found in a physical laboratory ; but actually, while 

 occasionally some piece of apparatus is just men- 

 tioned, the book has but little to do with physical 

 apparatus or its use. Measurements are supposed 

 already to have been made, and then the "theory 

 of measurements " comes in, and considerations 

 of accuracy, probability, least squares, and 

 scientific juggling generally are set before the 

 reader. It is difficult to say that they are ex- 

 plained ; they are stated. 



After a short introductory chapter, in which the 

 extreme accuracy of wave-length observations are 

 referred to and contrasted with a crude deter- 

 mination of ^ bv means of an extemporised simple 

 pendulum, with the view apparently of giving 

 some idea of the use of significant figures, the 

 author discusses in the next chapter the theory 



