EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 79 



be encouraged by this putting down of milestones, 

 and may almost believe that we have moved in the 

 right direction. Whereas, to those optimists who 

 are cheerfully and unhesitatingly educating their 

 allotted prey of children, it may be as salutary, as 

 a cautionary story, to realise that the same optimism 

 ruled one hundred years ago, when the Eton latin 

 grammar was a symbol to innumerable com- 

 placent schoolmasters of what was best in the best 

 of all possible worlds. But the chief part of what 

 I have to say is autobiographical, and I have 

 only an occasional remark to make on the progress 

 and improvement that have occurred in education. 

 r-^- My ignorance of educational methods may 

 probably lead me to repeat what is well known ; 

 because what seems to me bad in my training has 

 doubtless been recognised as such by modern 

 teachers, nor can I hope to have anything very new 

 to say about what seems to me to have been good. 



As children, we, my brothers and sisters, were 

 treated by our parents in a way the very reverse 

 of the pitiless 1 8th and early 19th century manner — 

 the spirit of those surprising stories such as the 

 Purple Jar, where the child is deceived by her 

 abominable parent. In fact, a chief characteristic 

 of our parents' treatment of us was their respect 

 for our liberty and our personality. We were made 

 to feel that we were " creatures whose opinions 

 and thoughts were valuable to them." 



The happy relations with our elders which we 

 enjoyed in the holidays to some extent counter- 

 acted the evil effects of going to .school. The 

 worst of a boarding-school is that it is a republic 



