52 



5th February^ i8gs. 



W. SwANSTON, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Dr. John MacCormac gave a Lecture on 

 EDUCATION AND INNERVATION. 



The Lecturer said — In his inaugural address to the students of 

 the University of St. Andrew's, the late John Stuart Mill said 

 of education — "Not only does it include whatever we do for 

 ourselves, and whatever is done for us by others, for the express 

 purpose of bringing us somewhat nearer to the perfection of 

 our nature ; it does more ; in its largest acceptation, it com- 

 prehends even the indirect efforts produced on character and on 

 the human faculties by things of which the purposes are quite 

 different ; by laws, by forms of government, by the industrial 

 arts, by modes of social life ; nay, even by physical facts not 

 dependent on human will, by climate, soil, and local position. 

 Whatever helps to shape the human being, to make the 

 individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is 

 not, is part of his education." The development of the true 

 man in the way most suited to his most peculiar characteristics 

 should, therefore, be the highest and most important con- 

 sideration of every man, who has the welfare of his species or 

 country at heart, for the general problem in this broadest of 

 all. questions for solution appears to me to be presented to us 

 in one word — namely, education. Now the function of education 

 may be briefly stated as the preparation for complete living, and 

 this is evidently what Mill meant when he uttered the words to 

 which I have drawn attention. For to know in what way to 



