184 SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION vii 



attention and accuracy, which are the two things 

 in which all mankind are more deficient than in 

 any other mental quality whatever. The whole 

 i of my life has been spent in trying to give my 

 I 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 



