D.— ZOOLOGY. 103 



part in the training of the young. Even down into the Middle Ages it 

 supplied an appreciable part of the curriculum of the educated man, the 

 seven liberal arts of those days containing a large infusion of what we 

 now call science. In later times, however, from the renaissance of 

 classical learning onwards, science has been kept in the obscure back- 

 ground of our educational curriculum, and in spite of much tinkering of 

 detail in recent years that curriculum continues unchanged in its main 

 features : it remains preponderatingly literary and classical. Even to-day, 

 if we listen to contemporary discussions on education, we commonly hear 

 arguments as to the relative merits of different constituents of the current 

 curriculum, but the general framework of that curriculum seems to be 

 regarded as sacred from all interference. 



And yet these recent years have witnessed the most tremendous 

 advances in the evolution of our social organisation, and, as the position 

 now is, it seems as certain as anything can be that unless further advance 

 is accompanied by a corresponding evolution in the training of our future 

 citizens a condition of instability will soon be reached such as to involve 

 the risk of complete disaster. Probably the factor in our modern social 

 evolution which has brought in its train the greatest danger is the develop- 

 ment of what in general terms we may call means of intercommunication — 

 the means by which transport is effected — on the one hand of material 

 things, on the other hand of ideas. Primitive man in the hunting phaise of 

 his evolution is a nomad, but a nomad within a restricted area : his wander- 

 ings are limited by the more or less vague boundaries between his own terri- 

 tory and that of neighbouring tribes. He is entirely dependent for food and 

 raiment upon what nature provides within these limits : he knows little of 

 the world beyond except that it is peopled by strangers of varpng degrees 

 of hostility : his code of ethics is limited by the same boundaries — highly 

 developed as regards intercourse with his own tribe, it ceases to exist in his 

 intercourse with those outside. His dominating idea is loyalty to his own 

 kinsfolk and fellow tribesmen, and for this idea he is ready to make any 

 sacrifice. 



With advancing evolution, when the conmiunal unit is no longer the 

 clan or tribe but the nation or federation of nations, geographical and 

 political boundaries still exist; but with the evolution of means of transport 

 by road and rail and sea they cease to form impassable barriers — men 

 and goods are able to pass them freely. Of even greater moment to 

 citizenship than the transport of material things is the transmission of 

 ideas. The great developments in this have come about in the first 

 place with the evolution of language, the vehicle of thought, which has 

 rendered possible the transmission of thought from individual to individual. 

 The use of visible material symbols of a lasting kind — whether 

 pictorial or simply conventional, as in writing and printing — while 

 facilitating still further the transmission of thought from individual to 

 individual and from place to place, has done far more, for it has enabled 

 the achievements of each generation to be handed on to its successors 

 with a completeness that was quite impossible by the merely spoken word. 



While these advances in the methods of transmitting thought have 

 played an all-important part in rendering secure the orderly progress of 

 human knowledge, they have brought in their train curiously one of the 



