L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 225 



all means, says Newman ; feed ear and mind with their language and 

 music ; but do not expect to know their full meaning before you 

 are 40. 



This truth, which Newman expresses in his exquisite prose, was well 

 known to Aristotle. ' One may enquire why a boy, though he may be a 

 mathematician, cannot be a metaphysician or a natural philosopher. 

 Perhaps the answer is that Mathematics deals with abstractions whereas 

 the first principles of Metaphysics and Natural Science are derived from 

 experience : the young can only repeat them without conviction of their 

 truth, whereas the formal concepts of Mathematics are easily understood.' 

 And again, ' the young are not fit to be students of politics, for they have 

 no experience of life and conduct, and it is these that supply the premises 

 and subject-matter of this branch of philosophy.' 3 The countries where 

 students, not content with the theory of politics, take a hand in its practice, 

 have a bitter knowledge of Aristotle's meaning. But it will also be 

 appreciated by those who have watched our own undergraduate students 

 of philosophy playing a game of intellectual ping-pong with the 

 Absolute. 



If you doubt the thesis that the humanistic subjects need experience of 

 life for their full appreciation, contrast, in respect of life, of the sense of 

 reality, history as written by those, from Thucydides onwards, who have 

 lived in the political world, and by those who know it only from a study. 

 Again, would not most university teachers agree that their most interesting, 

 I do not say ablest, pupils are those who come to the university not direct 

 from school, but from the army or business or some other occupation 

 where they have seen at first-hand something of the subjects with which 

 literature, philosophy and history deal ? Again, which of us has not 

 said in his thirties or forties, ' I wish I could have my education over 

 again ' ? If you analyse that wish, is it not another way of saying, ' I was 

 not old enough to profit by my education, when I had it ' ? And if you 

 analyse that statement in turn does it not mean, ' When I was at school 

 and university I did not know enough of life fully either to value my 

 education or to understand what it dealt with ' ? Perhaps students of 

 science or mathematics would not feel this. If so, it confirms my thesis 

 the more. But I suspect that nine-tenths of those whose studies were 

 humanistic would in later life wish to have their education again, and would 

 agree that in the early twenties they were not mature enough to profit 

 by it. 



I am here raising a question which I have no time to discuss, but which 

 needs more discussion than it gets. What does a pupil of the age of 14, 

 15, 16, 17 get from the study of history, for instance ? In secondary 

 schools it is a favourite subject for specialisation after the School Certificate. 

 How much of it can a schoolboy grasp ? I suspect that the right answer 

 is suggested by the comment of an examiner on the work of a member 

 of an ' Economics Sixth Form ' at a public school. ' These boys are 

 excellently taught and interested in the subject ; they read and reproduce 

 the best books persuasively ; and they have no real understanding of most 



3 Eth. Nic. VI. 8. 6. I. 3. 5. 



