312 REPORT— 1876. 



false, and dangerous to society. I do not undervalue either religious teacliing or 

 historical knowledge. Of the former, this is not the place in which it would become 

 me to speak, even were I its authorized exponent. Of the latter it would be almost 

 equally preposterous to speak slightingly. No one feels more keenly or practically 

 than I do that the past is the key to the future, and that all our knowledge depends 

 upon experience. Not only do I acknowledge this as an abstract truth, but I have 

 myself constantly been driven to historical study before I could attain any real mas- 

 tery of the work which lay before me in any of my pursuits, even of natural science. 

 Moreover my habits and instincts have a strong bias in that direction, my early 

 education having been classical and legal, and my first actual employment having 

 been in the archasology of painting. It is, therefore, with no prejudice against 

 useful scholastic learning that I raise my voice against the misdirection of education. 

 Still less is it with any prejudice against the exactness of the knowledge to be 

 acquired. 



Let us for a moment reflect upon what marks the difference between what we 

 are pleased to call civihzation and barbarism — what distinguishes the Anglo-Ame- 

 rican from the lied Indian, the Russian from the Tartar, the Western European 

 and his colonial congeners from the races which he is governing or replacing. It is 

 not, or at least assuredly not alone, by muscular superiority, nor is it by mere 

 astuteness ; the savage or the half-savage competes witli us A"ery favourably in both 

 these respects. To emphasize the real difference, let us go a Httle further back, and 

 ask ourselves wh)- the b.^ar and the tiger are no longer a terror to us, and why we 

 feel secure of the predominance of man, at any rate against the larger and fiercer of 

 the dwc'Uers in the eartii, the Avater, and the air. This predominance is due solely 

 to the command which our intellect has given us o^'er the material powers of nature. 

 Physical science has enabled us to set these against tlie mere unaided strength of 

 brutes. Superior and more exact science has enabled the dominant races to bring 

 more of these material forces to bear upon their enemies than the barbarous tribes 

 could array against them. This is so universally admitted as a principle that its 

 real application is often forgotten; and there are many who thiidi that our ci\ilizatioii 

 has in it something sid generis, some special innate principle which assures us 

 against barbarian attack, instead of regarding it in its proper light, as merely one 

 element of strength which maj' turn the balance in our favour, provided we are 

 equally, or nearly equally, matched in other I'espects. But history is not wanting 

 in terrible less()ns of the utter destruction of ci\ilized communities. Long-continued 

 security and the accumulation of mechanical appliances carry with them and foster 

 the seeds of social decay. 



These, perchance, are remote contingencies, although even to nations disaster 

 comes unexpected. 



More immediate and more obvious risks are these : that we may be beaten by 

 other nations, not in a struggle for bare existence, but in industrial competition, 

 and that the crowded population which has to be maintained in these islands, and 

 wliich former prosperity has accustomed to expensive habits of life, and not to the 

 endurance of scarcity or hardship, may not find the means of exchanging its labour 

 advantageously for the material of its sustenance ; or that ignorance of the condi- 

 tions of health, or inattention to its laws, may expose us to disease. Not all of us, 

 I conjecture, have realized how much more difficult and costlv it is to keep in pi'O- 

 sperity and health the enormous agglomerations of luunanity which Western Eu- 

 rope on the one hand, and China and India on the otlier present to us, than to feed 

 the scattered population? which occupy tlie less crowded regions of the globe. I 

 think some of us are now beginning at least to under,>tand that there are material 

 difficidties in keeping any large collection of one group of animated life together, so 

 that each indi\ idual shall not intercept or contaminate the sources of nourishment 

 of himself or of others. 



Now what I wish j'ou to reflect upon is, that these difficulties are material, and 

 are therefore to be m 3t by a thorough and widespread knowledge of natural science. 

 With thin populations, which have more to fear from war and famuie than from 

 want of elbowroom, political and histcnical knowledge in the governing class is more 

 important than exact natural knowledge in the administrative class. As the popu- 

 lation thickens, the latter assumes more and more relative importance ; and while I 



