vii SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION I7o 



discuss now ; in fact, it is a point which cannot be 

 settled until one has made up one's mind about 

 various other questions. 



All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of 

 the scientific people, if I may venture to speak 

 for more than myself, is that you should put 

 scientific teaching into what statesmen call the 

 condition of " the most favoured nation " ; that is 

 to say, that it shall have as large a share of the 

 time given to education as any other principal 

 subject. You may say that that is a very vague 

 statement, because the value of the allotment of 

 time, under those circumstances, depends upon 

 the number of principal subjects. It is x the 

 time, and an unknown quantity of principal sub- 

 jects dividing that, and science taking shares with 

 the rest. That shows that we cannot deal with 

 this question fully until we have made up our 

 minds as to what the principal subjects of educa- 

 tion ought to be. 



I know quite well that launching myself into 

 this discussion is a very dangerous operation ; that 

 it is a very large subject, and one which is difficult 

 to deal with, however much I may trespass upon 

 your patience in the time allotted to me. But the 

 discussion is so fundamental, it is so completely 

 impossible to make up one's mind on these 

 matters until one has settled the question, that I 

 will even venture to make the experiment. A 

 great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former 



