

rv, ve eS eee es 
Nov. 10, 1870] 
NATURE 23 

of natural selection, when once fairly engaged in the 
struggle for existence, no less a penalty than ultimate ex- 
tinction awaits the weaker race. If the parallelism be- 
tween a race and a sex can be maintained at all—and the | 
parallelism is Mr. Huxley’s, not ours—it plainly implies 
that, put into competition with man, woman must sooner 
or later cease to exist as @ competitor, just as certainly as 
the black rat has been driven out before the Mus decu- 
manus, or as, to adopt a different class of example, the 
handloom weavers have been driven from the market by 
machinery and steam. But while we thus doubt the wis- 
dom, or indeed the possibility, of placing women on a level 
with men, and in competition with them, we would by 
no means therefore be understood to argue against giving 
them a Jiberal education or improving the law in regard 
to their property, : 
Passing on to consider for a short time the Educational 
essays, we need say but avery few words of thesingle speci- 
men given of tlie writer’s method in practical education, viz. 
the Lecture on a Piece of Chalk. It is certain to be well 
known to most of our readers. Those who do know it, 
for the most part recognise it as a model both in matter 
and in manner of what a single lecture ought to be ; those 
who do not had better read it at once, for till they have 
so done they will have but an imperfect idea of sucha 
model. The other educational essays, viz. the first six 
in the book (with the exception of the second) contain an 
exposition of the author’s views on many of those points 
in the theory of education which are most keenly disputed 
at the present time, such as the value of natural science 
as contrasted with mathematics or philology as an in- 
strument of education; that of the natural history sciences 
as contrasted with other branches of natural science, the 
method by which they should be taught, &c. Nowit is 
only fair to admit that in all these matters Professor 
Huxley’s addresses must be looked upon as the speeches 
of an advocate, and moreover of an advocate who feels that 
he carries the feeling of the public with him for the most 
_ part, but is by no means equally sure that he can overcome 
the prejudices of the jury. Still, considered as the speeches 
of an adyocate, they are admirable, and it must be remem- 
bered that an advocate may prove his case, and this, we 
think, Mr. Huxley has in several instances done. In 
regard to the most important of the questions discussed, 
we are disposed to believe that any one of these three 
instruments of education may turn out a highly cultivated 
and thoroughly well educated man, provided the teacher 
knows how to teach and the learner presents good raw 
material upon which he may exercise his skill; but this 
by no means proves that they are all of equal value. 
One thing we can certainly say in regard to the classical 
education of our own day, that is to say, of the day of 
those who are the acting men of the present generation, 
_viz., that, however well it may have served the turn of 
that small minority who were sure:to make the best of any 
kind of education, and for whom, therefore, it is the least 
necessary to make provision, it has done nothing at all 
for the great majority of those who have been submitted to 
it. It is not too much to say, that out of the men who have 
gone from public schools to Oxford, and who have spent 
their whole lives between the ages of eight and twenty-two 
in learning Latin and Greek, not one in three could at the 
latter age read a Latin or Greek author with ease and 

intelligence. This may not in itself prove the case of 
science as an instrument of education, or even prove the 
inefficiency of classics ; but at least it shows that classics 
have failed as a fact, and reduces us to this dilemma, that 
we must admit either that they are but a very imperfect 
means of education, or that the general standard of edu- 
cability among young Englishmen is unaccountably low. 
One other alternative indeed remains, viz. the supposi- 
tion that classics have been generally very badly taught, 
but this seems to us hardly tenable. It is difficult to 
believe that so much labour has been bestowed by so 
many good scholars as may be found amongst the school- 
masters of the last fifty years, upon the art of teaching 
classics, without the elements even of the art being dis- 
covered. At any rate reformers, or even revolution- 
ists, in education may fairly argue, that what has not 
been done in so many years by a method which has had 
the whole field of the higher education to itself, is hardly 
likely to be effected by a persistent continuance in the 
same path. We are reminded of the physician of Laputa, 
of whom, when he had already almost killed his victim 
by his discipline, Gulliver says, ‘‘ We left the doctor en- 
deayouring to recover his patient dy the same operation.” 
We have left ourselves no space in which to notice the 
remaining and more directly scientific portion of Professor 
Huxley’s work. The book is not to be discussed fairly in 
the space at our disposal: it is, however, full of interest 
throughout, and we need perhaps the less regret that we 
are unable to direct our readers’ attention to the remaining 
essays, inasmuch as they constitute that part of the work 
which deals with the scientific controversies of the day 
some of which have already been discussed in NATURE, 
G, W.G 


FERNET’S ELEMENTARY PHYSICS 
Par Ch. Drion et E, 
(Paris; V, Masson et 
Traité de Physique Elémentaire. 
Fernet. Troisitme Edition, 
Fils. 1869.) 
HE third edition of this well-known handbook of 
French physics deserves more than a casual notice. 
We are told in the preface that it has been entirely recast 
by the second of the two original authors, M. Fernet, a 
pupil of the lamented Verdet, who has caught something 
of the spirit of his master. There has been no teacher of 
physics in our time whose work has been, on the whole, 
comparable to that of Verdet. He has all the clearness 
of Tyndall; and, as almost all of his published lectures 
were delivered to audiences more strictly scientific than 
those to whom the famous books on Sound and Heat 
were originally presented, he is never diffuse. His arrange- 
ment of the essential points of his subject, and his 
grouping of the illustrative details and of the exceptions 
to the general principles which govern it, have scarcely 
been equalled even in France, which is the special country 
of precise and exhaustive exposition. It is high praise, 
therefore, to say of M. Fernet, that in parts his book 
recalls his master’s method and style. 
The treatment of mechanics which is common in this 
country places statics before dynamics. There is only 
one thing to be said in favour of this arrangement—that 
the idea which lies at the root of dynamics, that of change 
of rate of motion, is a little difficult for a beginner to 
