8 REPORT—1885. 
While the Commission gives us the consolation that England is still in 
advance as an industrial nation, it warns us that foreign nations, which 
were not long ago far behind, are now making more rapid progress than 
this country, and will soon pass it in the race of competition unless we 
give increased attention to science in public education. A few of the 
large towns, notably Manchester, Bradford, Huddersfield, and Birming- 
ham, are doing so. The working classes are now receiving better 
instruction in science than the middle classes. The competition of 
actual life asserts its own conditions, for the children of the latter find 
increasing difficulty in obtaining employment. The cause of this lies in 
the fact that the schools for the middle classes have not yet adapted 
themselves to the needs of modern life. Itis true that many of the 
endowed schools have been put under new schemes, but as there is no 
public supervision or inspection of them, we have no knowledge as to 
whether they have prospered or slipped back. Many corporate schools 
have arisen, some of them, like Clifton, Cheltenham, and Marlborough 
Colleges, doing excellent educational work, though as regards all of them 
the public have no rights and cannot enforce guarantees for efficiency. 
A Return just issued, on the motion of Sir John Lubbock, shows a 
lamentable deficiency in science teaching in a great proportion of the 
endowed schools. While twelve to sixteen hours per week are devoted to 
classics, two to three hours are considered ample for science in a large 
proportion of the schools. In Scotland there are only six schools in the 
Return which give more than two hours to science weekly, while in many 
schools its teaching is wholly omitted. Every other part of the kingdom 
stands in a better position than Scotland in relation to the science of its 
endowed schools. The old traditions of education stick as firmly to 
schools as a limpet does to a rock; though I do the limpet injustice, for 
it does make excursions to seek pastures new. Are we to give up in 
despair because an exclusive system of classical education has resisted 
the assaults of such cultivated authors as Milton, Montaigne, Cowley, and 
Locke ? There was once an enlightened Emperor of China, Chi Hwangti, 
who knew that his country was kept back by its exclusive devotion to the 
classics of Confucius and Mencius. He invited 500 of the teachers to 
bring their copies of these authors to Pekin, and after giving a great 
banquet in their honour, he buried alive the professors aloug with 
their manuscripts in a deep pit. But Confucius and Mencius still reign 
supreme. I advocate milder measures, and depend for their adoption on 
the force of public opinion. The needs of modern life will force schools 
to adapt themselves to a scientific age. Grammar-schools believe them- 
selves to be immortal. Those curious immortals—the Struldbrugs— 
described by Swift, ultimately regretted their immortality, because they 
found themselves out of touch, sympathy, and fitness with the centuries 
in which they lived. 
As there is no use clamouring for an instrument of more compass and 
power until we have made up our mind as to the tune, Professor Huxley, in 
