Sir Joshua Fitch's Address 267 



the Board of Education or by the University Local 

 Examinations. The fact is, that astronomy is the 

 most disinterested of sciences. There is no visible 

 industrial purpose to be served by it, no money to be 

 made by it, and no prizes to be won. In short, the 

 teacher and the pupil alike are fain to conclude that 

 it will not pay to spend any time on the study. 

 Yet, if we consider the higher purpose of all true 

 education, we cannot afford to forget that there is no 

 study so well calculated to excite the imagination, to 

 lift up the thoughts above the region of the prosaic 

 and commonplace, to give a scholar a sense of the 

 vastness and richness of the universe, and so to make 

 him aware of the place which he himself holds in it. 

 "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy 

 fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast 

 ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, 

 and the Son of Man that Thou so regardest him?" 



It is not merely information about the heavenly 

 bodies that enriches our intellectual life. It is the 

 lifting up of the eyes and the heart, and the broaden- 

 ing of the mental and spiritual horizon, which make 

 the study of even elementary astronomy so precious 

 as an ingredient in popular education, and which 

 justify the claim the advocates of Nature-study are 

 making when they ask for this subject a more hon- 

 oured place than it now holds in the curriculum of 

 our schools. 



I think, too, that more attention should be paid in 

 our schools to the weather, that subject of universal 

 interest in the outside world and in the home. Every 

 school should have a thermometer and a barometer, 

 a sun-dial and a rain-gauge, and the older chil- 



