THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1871 



RECENT UTTERANCES 
HE Oracle has spoken. In fact several Oracles have 
spoken. Let us take them seriatim. From the lips 
of two of the most enlightened members of the Cabinet 

we have had at last an authoritative expression of the | 
desirability — nay more, of the absolute necessity —of | 
scientific education for the country at large. Address- 
ing his constituents at Bradford on Monday the 2nd inst. 
in a speech to which we have already alluded, on the 
occasion of the opening of the new Mechanics’ Institute 
for that town, Mr. W. E. Forster, the Minister for Educa- 
tion, as he ought to be styled, made use of the following 
emphatic language :—“ The old grammar-school teaching 
was almost framed upon the advantage that Latin and 
Greek well taught gave to the boys; now, we find that 
the boys cannot do without the use of more general know- 
ledge than is given by Latin and Greek , that there must 
be a knowledge of modern languages. But there may be 
also a feeling that we ought to know something of the 
daily facts of life, and the rudiments of Science. There, 
again, I speak from a sense of my own want, and I have 
often thought how much more useful I might have been 
—at any rate, how much stronger I might have been—if 
I had had given to me a scientific education, such as I 
think we may now hope that our children will attain.” And 
again: “ We now believe that we have taken measures by 
which we may secure elementary education to all children 
of all classes in our borough, and throughout the country, 
and, consequently, those who attend this institution will 
have the foundation of a training that will enable them 
to fulfil the original idea of its promoters,” that is, “ to give 
mechanics scientific knowledge.” 
On the following day Lord Granville, the Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs, when presiding at the opening 
of the Dover College (intended to provide, at a very 
moderate cost, a first-class English and classical educa- 
tion), took the opportunity to make the following pertinent 
remarks :—“ Then there is the study of Science in its 
different departments. I believe this to be eminently 
wise, and a matter to which parents in the present day 
attach very great importance. I believe the results of 
this branch of education are of considerable consequence ; 
for after all, a mere smattering of education is of very 
little use in any department, but a really scientific mode 
of studying different branches of Science is one of the 
best and most useful instruments of education you can use, 
I remember reading a very remarkable speech, with 
most of which I agree, delivered by Mr. John Stuart Mill, 
on the difficulties of a comprehensive education. He said 
the study of Science taught young men to think, while the 
study of Classics gave them the power of expressing their 
thoughts. I own I have thought there is some little fallacy 
in the distinction drawn between the education taught in 
these twodepartments. I believe it is almost impossible 
for aman to study the ancient languages without himself 
acquiring great habits of thought, and I daresay you have 
all had opportunities of hearing some of the most dis- 
tinguished professors, some now dead and others living, 
who have conveyed their thoughts te their audiences in 
such singularly clear and perfectly eloquent language, that 
VOL, IV. 
NATURE 

461 

I feel there is something in the study of Science which 
makes a man feel that in what he is talking about, he 
must eschew all redundant and irrelevant verbiage.” 
The significance of these outcomes is not to be mis- 
taken, and Lord Granville’s remarks are of none the less 
authority because he does not happen to be our Home 
Secretary. His knowledge of the state of education in 
some other European countries has doubtless made him 
all the more sensible to the Jamentable defects of our own. 
Of the other leading members of the Cabinet, Mr. Glad- 
stone is too far-seeing a man to oppose the manifest ten- 
dencies of the age, Mr. Lowe has shown himself ready to 
respond to every legitimate demand made on the public 
purse by the proper representatives of the wants of Science, 
and the Duke of Argyll is himself a writer on Science. 
While we cannot but congratulate ourselves that our 
rulers are at length alive to the importance of making 
Science the base of all true education, a necessity we 
have so constantly and earnestly insisted on, we still 
cannot but inquire how it is that all this has been 
so long in making itself self-evident to our public 
men, In the same address from which we have 
already quoted, Mr. Forster pointed out that the 
original design of the founders of Mechanics’ Institutes 
was to give a scientific education to the working classes ; 
but that they soon found that there was an almost univer- 
sally spread absolute ignorance of even the most 
elementary facts on which a scientific education could be 
based. And yet all these years have been allowed to pass, 
and it is only yesterday, as it were, that any serious attempt 
has been made to provide a scientific education for the 
working classes. We are even surprised to find that the 
first advances made by teachers of science in this direction 
are met by an eagerness and enthusiasm which will soon 
outstrip the limited means at command to satisfy its 
cravings. In the higher strata of society it is the same; 
wherever the elements of science, natural or physical, are 
taught by a competent teacher, they are absorbed by boys 
and girls, and grown-up men and women too, with a zeal 
seldom bestowed on their Latin or Mathematics ; there is 
something in these studies which the human mind finds 
really to respond to its own instincts. If the next gene- 
ration of Englishmen does not grow up with more than a 
smattering of the rudiments of science, it will be the fault 
of the present teachers of science themselves. 
From men of high position but out of the Cabinet, who 
are clear-sighted enough to discern the wants of the age, 
we hear the same demands on every side. Sir J. Lubbock 
the other day, in addressing a meeting of working men at 
Liverpool, after delivering the prizes in connection with 
science classes, said that scientific men throughout the 
country unanimously regretted the manner in which the 
grants to elementary schools are distributed. Reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, although the foundations of edu- 
cation, are not education itself, and the schools will never 
be placed ona sound and satisfactory basis until they 
take a wider ground. And at the meeting of the Social 
Science Congress, held during the present week at Leeds, 
Mr. Joseph Payne, than whom no more practical authority 
could be found, read a paper on scientific teaching and 
the advantages of mental discipline for children, approving 
of the cultivation of the faculties of observation and ex- 
periment and direct training from nature. Science teach- 
BB 
