34 



HUXLEY 



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, taught, not as a mere chronicle of reigns 

 and battles, not as evidence that Providence has al- 

 ways been on the side of the Whigs or Tories, but 

 as a chapter in the development of the race, and the 

 history of civilisation. 1 



Literature should have a large place, because 



an exclusively scientific training will bring about a 

 mental twist as surely as an exclusively literary train- 

 ing. For literature is the greatest of all sources of 

 refined pleasure, and there is scope enough for the 

 purposes of liberal education in the study of the rich 

 treasures of our own language alone. ... I have 

 said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man cannot 

 get literary culture of the highest kind out of his 

 Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, he cannot get it 

 out of anything, and I would assuredly devote a very 

 large portion of the time of every English child to 

 the careful study of models of English writing of 

 such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, 

 what is still more important, and still more neglected, 

 the habit of using that language with precision, with 

 force, and with art. 2 



These, together with translations of the best ancient 

 and modern works, where time or circumstance do not 

 permit of the learning of foreign languages, Huxley 

 counted among the essentials. The law of propor- 

 tion, non multa, sed multum, must be observed if there 

 is to be any thoroughness in education, and if the 



1 lb., iii. p. 184. 2 Coll. Essays, iii. pp. 109, 185. 



