303 



NATURE 



S^Aug. 20, 1874 



with a host of new means to attain them ; though this mode 

 of their action is sufficiently important that the statesman, 

 the historian, and the philosopher, as well as the manufac- 

 turer and the merchant, cannot pass without participation 

 in, atleast, the practical results; but because there is another 

 form of their action which goes much deeper and further, 

 though it is, perhaps, more slowin manifesting itself; 1 mean 

 their influence in the direction of the intellectual progress 

 of humanity. It has often been said, and even brought as 

 a charge against the natural sciences, that, through them, 

 a schism {::iuicspalt), formerly unknown, has been intro- 

 duced into modern education. And, indeed, there is truth 

 in this. A schism is perceptible ; yet such must mark 

 every new step of intellectual development wherever the 

 New has become a power, and the question to be settled is, 

 the definition of its just claims, as against the just claims 

 of the Old. The past progress of education of civilised 

 nations has had its central point in the study of lan- 

 guage. Language is the great instrument through posses- 

 sion of which man is most distinctly separated from the 

 lower animals ; through use of which he is able to share the 

 experience and knowlcdgeof other individuals of his time, 

 as also those of past generations ; without which each man 

 would, like the lower animals, be limited to his instinct 

 and to his own particular experience. That therefore 

 the improvement of language was formerly tlie first and 

 most necessary work of a growing race, and that the 

 most refined perfection of its comprehension and its use 

 is, and must ever be, the primary problem in the education 

 of each individual, is undoubted. The culture of modern 

 European nations has a peculiarly intimate connection 

 with the study of the remains of antiquity ; and thereby, 

 directly with the study of language. With the latter 

 study was associated that of the forms of thought, which .are 

 coined in speech ; logic and grammar, that is, according 

 to the original meaning of the words, the art of speaking 

 and the art of writing, both taken in the highest sense, 

 have therefore been hitherto the natural hinge points of 

 mental education. 



But while language is the means of handing down and 

 preserving truth once recognised, we must not forget that 

 its study teaches nothing as to how fresh truth is to be 

 found. Similarly, logic shows how, from the pi-oposition 

 which forms the major of a syllogism, conclusions are to 

 be drawn ; but it can tell us nothing as to whence this pro- 

 position has come. He who will convince himself of its 

 independent truth must, on the other hand, begin with 

 knowledge of the individual cases which fall under the 

 law, and which afterwards, if this have been established, 

 may doubtless also be accepted as deductions from the 

 law. liut only where a knowledge of the law is one which 

 has been communicated by others, does it actually take 

 precedence of knowledge of the deductions, and in such 

 a case, the treatises of the old formal logic assume their 

 undeniable pi-actical importance. 



Thus all these studies do not themselves lead us to the 

 proper source of knowledge — do not bring us face to face 

 with the reality which we seek to know. There is there- 

 fore, undoubtedly, a danger in communicating to each 

 one, by preference, a knowledge the source of which 

 he has not personally contemplated. Comparative my- 

 thology and the criticism of the metaphysical systems 

 can tell a great deal of how figurative word-e.\pression 



has in time been exalted to the importance of real know- 

 ledge and even become valued as ultimate wisdom. 



While fully recognising, then, the significance (not to 

 be sufficiently appreciated), of the finely elaborated art of 

 communicating the acquired knowledge of others, and 

 receiving in return such communications from others, in 

 regard to the mental improvement of our race ; while also 

 recognising the importance attaching to the contents of 

 the classical writings, for the cultivation of the moral and 

 aesthetic sentiments, for the development of an intimate 

 knowledge of human feelings, conceptions, and conditions 

 of culture ; we must yet hold that an important element is 

 wanting from the exclusively literary-logical mode of edu- 

 cation ; and that is the methodical discipline of the activity 

 by which we reduce the confused material which meets 

 us in the actual world, apparently (at first sight) ruled by 

 wild chance rather than reason, to clear conception, and 

 thereby make it fit for expression in speech. Such an 

 art of observation and experiment, methodically deve- 

 loped, we have hitherto found in the natural sciences 

 alone ; and our hope, that the psychology of indi- 

 viduals and peoples, with the practical sciences of educa- 

 tion and of social and political government based upon 

 it, will attain the same end, can only be fulfilled in a distant 

 future. 



This newenterprise,prosecuted bynatural science onnevv 

 paths, has quickly enough yielded fresh and, of their kind, 

 unheard-of results, evidencing what achievements human 

 thought is capable of, where it can go the whole way from 

 the facts to the full knowledge of the law under favour- 

 able conditions, testing and knowing ever) thing for itself. 

 The simple relations, especially those of inorganic nature, 

 permit of our posessing such a penetrating and accurate 

 knowledge of their laws, such far-reaching deduction of 

 inferences from them, and the testing and verification of 

 these by such an exact reference to fact, that, with the 

 systematic unfolding of such conceptions (<■._;,'■. with the 

 deduction of astronomical phenomena from the law of 

 gravitation), there is hardly any other edifice of human 

 thought which, for strict logic, certainty, correctness, and 

 productiveness, can at all be compared with it. 



I point out these relations merely with the view of 

 showing in what sense the natural sciences are a new and 

 essential element of human education ; of indestructible 

 importance, also, for all further development of this in the 

 future ; and that a complete education of the individual 

 man, as of nations, will no longer be possible without a 

 union of the past literary-logical with the new natural- 

 science direction of study. 



Now, the majority of the educated hitherto have beeil 

 instructed only in the old way — have hardly at all come 

 into contact with the work of thought in natural science ; 

 at the most, perhaps, a little with mathematics. It is merv 

 of this kind of education that our Governments appoint, 

 by preference, to educate our children, to maintain reve- 

 rence for moral order, and to preserve the treasures of 

 knowledge and wisdom of our forefathers. It is they, too, 

 who must organise the changes in the mode of education 

 of the rising generation ; where such changes are required 

 they must be encouraged or compelled thereto by the 

 public opinion of the intelligent classes of the whole com- 

 munity, both men and women. 



Apart from the natural impulse of e\ery warm-hcarled 



