| Fan. 2, 1873] , 
NATURE 
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165 
It is, however, a happy omen for the future of higher edu- 
cation among us that some of the most strenuous champions 
of change are to be found among those whose vested in- 
terests and traditions might have been deemed likely to 
ensure their conservatism, These men are not in much 
danger of going too far, and yet their earnestness is a 
guarantee that they certainly have no intention of standing 
still. The foundations on which the culture of centuries 
has been built are not to be ruthlessly pulled up; but the 
time has assuredly come when they need to be broadened 
and widened, 
Let no one imagine that such words as these imply any 
want of reverence for the time-honoured means of mental 
discipline. Literature and philosophy have ever taken, 
and must ever take, the foremost place in intellectual cul- 
ture. They bring mind in contact with mind, and with all 
that is highest and noblest in the history of humanity, 
There was a time, indeed, when they comprised the whole 
sum of human thought. That time has long passed, and 
yet, in our traditional system of education, we still per- 
petuate its memory. But man has since then discovered 
that, although he be indeed a marvellous microcosm, there 
lies outside of him a great world full of infinite diversity 
wherein he can, nevertheless, discover such a unity of plan 
as links even his own being with every part of nature. 
It is not now enough that man shall know what his 
forefathers have thought, or written or done, nor that he 
shall «content himself with studying the nature and 
workings of his own mind, or busy himself with abstract 
principles of magnitude and number. Now why is this 
so? Because during the last two hundred years his 
relations to the external world have been so thoroughly 
altered. He is no longer a mere higher kind of animal, 
ignorant almost as other animals of the phenomena in 
progress around him, and well-nigh as helpless as they in 
the inevitable struggle with the elements. For thousands 
of years he had aspired to rule over but one, and that the 
least, of the domains of which he was made lord at the 
beginning :—he was content with undisputed dominion 
over the beast of the field, and the fish of the sea, and 
the fowl of the air. He has now claimed the right which 
was his by the same charter to have dominion over the 
earth and to subdue it. So that now his mastery is 
hardly less decisive over air, and land, and sea. He can 
bend the energy of nature to do his humblest offices. 
What is it, then, which has made this difference 
between man’s power in this present time and that which 
he possessed only afew generations ago? Can you trace 
it to the teaching of the schools? Is it the fruit of that 
traditional system handed down to us from older centuries? 
Assuredly not, it has sprung from a sphere of education 
outside of the schools. It is to be traced, without doubt 
or cavil, to the strides which modern physical science has 
taken, Man has gone to school elsewhere than in the 
class-rooms. He has proved himself too, to be an apt 
pupil, for in the comparatively short space of time in 
which he has given himself to these pursuits, he has 
gained such a mass of knowledge as has enabled him 
to work greater changes on the face of the globe and on 
his own relations to it than had been effected during all 
the previous centuries put together. 
By this wide-spread dominion over nature we stand 
separated by a kind of gulf from our forefathers. And 
yet strange as it may seem, we have made no corre- 
sponding change in the range of subjects which are still 
prescribed for the higher education of the country. We 
send our young men and young women to be trained 
very much in the same modes which were in use a couple 
of centuries ago ormore, Welive in the days of railways 
and telegraphs, and we educate our youth as if they 
lived before the introduction of mail-coaches. 
It is true that both in the higher schools and colleges, 
certain supplementary subjects, of which natural science 
is one, may be taken at the option of the learner. But 
these subjects are not made essential parts of our higher 
education, nor does any provision exist for making them 
more than mere sources of information. They are not in 
any way made use of as implements of intellectual 
training. And even the use to which they are put is so 
slight that a man may attain the highest academic 
honours and yet remain as ignorant as a school-boy of 
the commonest facts and phenomena around him, and of 
the causes which make his own age to differ so prodi- 
giously from the ages which have gone before it. 
I remember being much impressed with this fact, 
when as a boy, I met among the hills of Skye,a man 
who had not Jong taken his Master’s degree at Cambridge 
and who had retired to that remote region for the pur- 
poses of further study. We happened to get into conver- 
sation regarding the origin of the mild climate of the 
north-west of Scotland. On being questioned, I referred 
to the influence of the Gulf-stream, My friend, however, 
had never heard of a Gulf-stream, refused to believe it 
to be more than one of what he called my “geological 
speculations,” and would hardly even credit the school- 
master, who, when appealed to, gravely assured him that 
he had heard of the Gulf-stream before I was born. 
This may be an extreme case, but it is an actual one. 
It serves to show that though a man can hardly fail to 
pick up some acquaintance with science in the course 
of ordinary conversation or in reading the current literature 
of the day, no provision exists for making instruction in 
the meaning of the ordinary every-day facts of nature 
a necessary part of education, and that a man may gain 
his academic honours even without such instruction. 
I am well aware that in one way or other a smattering 
of at least one science, sometimes a confused jumble of 
several, is very commonly carried away from school. 
The science-classes there, though they may be wholly 
optional, are often also popular with the scholars. Inte- 
resting experiments, pretty specimens and amusing dia- 
grams are exhibited, and some amount of information 
is communicated, even if no special interest should be 
awakened in the subject, and no clear mental gain should 
be the result. But this is far from the sort of position 
which, as it seems to me, science ought to hold in higher 
education, 
If culture is to be really liberal, that is, free and 
generous, surely it ought above all things to reflect fully 
and fairly the spirit and character of the time. If it 
shuts out this influence and continues to maintain the 
standard fixed for a wholly different time, does it not 
cease to be truly liberal? Full of reverence for the past, 
and striving after the fullest use of the heritage of wisdom 
which the past has bequeathed, a liberal culture, to 
be worthy of the name, must recognise that no standard 
however serviceable for the time in which it was erected, 
can be permanent ; and that the limits which it sets for 
its own age cannot bind the ages to come. — For the laws 
of continuity and evolution embrace the workings of 
the human mind as well as the operations of outer nature. 
And in the end it will be as impossible to keep the flow 
of youthful thought confined in one narrow and old- 
fashioned channel as it would be to restrain the river 
which is every moment rising to overflow its banks. _ 
No great foresight is needed, therefore, to perceive 
that before many years are past the stereotyped curricu- 
lum for what is called a liberal education, whether in 
higher schools or in the universities, must be modified. 
It is not enough that a young man or a young woman 
should be permitted a choice as to the acquiring of some 
knowledge of science beyond that needed for the old 
standard. This knowledge, but still more the intellectual 
training by which it was originally obtained, should bean 
essential part of any system of education truly deserving 
now-a-days the name of liberal. And the want of this 
training should be regarded as quite as serious a defect 
in education as an ignorance of Latin or mathematics. 
(To be continued.) 
