ADDRESS. 11 
these questions is that our systems of education are still too narrow for 
the increasing struggle of life. 
Faraday, who had no narrow views in regard to education, deplored 
the future of our youth in the competition of the world, because, as he 
said with sadness, ‘our schoolboys, when they come out of school, are 
ignorant of their ignorance at the end of all that education.’ 
The opponents of science education allege that it is not adapted for 
mental development, because scientific facts are often disjointed and 
exercise only the memory. Those who argue thus do not know what 
science is. No doubt an ignorant or half-informed teacher may present 
science as an accumulation of unconnected facts. At all times and in all 
subjects there are teachers without wsthetical or philosophical capacity 
—men who can only see carbonate of lime in a statue by Phidias or 
Praxiteles; who cannot survey zoology on account of its millions of 
species, or botany because of its 130,000 distinct plants ; men who can look 
at trees without getting a conception of a forest, and cannot distinguish a 
stately edifice from its bricks. To teach in that fashion is like going to 
the tree of science with its glorious fruit in order to pick up a handful of 
the dry fallen leaves from the ground. It is, however, true that as 
science teaching has had less lengthened experience than that of literature, 
its methods of instruction are not so matured. Scientific and literary 
teaching have different methods; for while the teacher of literature rests 
on authority and on books for his guidance, the teacher of science 
discards authority and depends on facts at first hand, and on the book of 
Nature for their interpretation. Natural science more and more resolves 
itself into the teaching of the laboratory. In this way it can be used as 
a powerful means of quickening observation, and of creating a faculty of 
induction after the manner of Zadig, the Babylonian described by 
Voltaire. Thus facts become surrounded by scientific conceptions, aud 
are subordinated to order and law. 
It is not those who desire to unite literature with science who degrade 
education ; the degradation is the consequence of the refusal. A violent 
reaction—too violent to be wise—has lately taken place against classical 
education in France, where their own vernacular occupies the position of 
dead languages, while Latin and science are given the same time in the 
curriculum, In England manufacturers cry out for technical education, 
in which classical culture shall be excluded. In the schools of the middle 
classes science rather than technics is needed, because, when the seeds of 
science are sown, technics as its fruit will appear at the appointed time. 
Epictetus was wise when he told us to observe that, though sheep eat 
grass, it is not grass but wool that grows on their backs. Should, how- 
ever, our grammar-schools persist in their refusal to adapt themselves to 
the needs of a scientific age, England must follow the example of other 
European nations and found new modern schools in competition with 
them. For, as Huxley has put it, we cannot continue in this age ‘of full 
modern artillery to turn out our boys to do battle in it, equipped only 
