5o8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxxii 



before the public by another address deHvered at the Society 

 of Arts. The Clothworkers Company had already been as- 

 sisting the Society of Arts in their efforts for the spread 

 of technical education ; and in July 1877 a special committee 

 of the Guilds applied to him, amongst half a dozen others, 

 to furnish them with a report as to the objects and methods 

 of a scheme of technical education. This paper fills sixteen 

 pages in the Report of the Livery Companies' Committee 

 for 1878. The fundamental principles on which he bases 

 his practical recommendations are contained in the following 

 paragraph : — 



It appears to me that if every person who is engaged in an 

 industry had access to instruction in the scientific principles on 

 which that industry is based; in the mode of applying these 

 principles to practice; in the actual use of the means and appli- 

 ances employed; in the language of the people who know as 

 much about the matter as we do ourselves; and lastly, in the 

 art of keeping accounts. Technical Education would have done 

 all that can be required of it. 



And his suggestion about buildings was at once adopted 

 by the Committee, namely, that they should be erected at a 

 future date, regard being had primarily rather to what is 

 wanted in the inside than what will look well from the 

 outside. 



Now the Guilds formed a very proper body to set such 

 a scheme on foot, because only such wealthy and influential 

 members of the first mercantile city in the world could 

 afford to let themselves be despised and jeered at for pro- 

 fessing to teach English manufacturers and English mer- 

 chants that they needed to be taught ; and to spend £25,000 

 a year towards that end for some time without apparent 

 result. 



That they eventually succeeded, is due no little to the 

 careful plans drawn out by Huxley. He may be described 

 as " really the engineer of the City and Guilds Institute ; for 

 without his advice," declared one of the leading members, 

 " we should not have known what to have done." 



At the same time he warned them against indiscriminate 

 zeal ; " though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not 



