LIBERAL EDUCATION. 21 



of the severer study of language has very little comprehension of the 

 true nature of the study of science, or else, like the public orator of 

 Cambridge, in his " tonic " theory, confounds together the ideas of 

 severity and distastefulness. And Mr. Hawtrey's very childish con- 

 ceptions in regard to the teaching of science are further exemplified 

 when he goes on to ask : " Would there not be great danger of boys 

 becoming less vigorous*minded than they are ? . . . Will their becom- 

 ing acquainted with a string of scientific results stand them instead 

 of the mental training they now get ? " 



Thus we see that the highest conception a master of Eton has of 

 the study of science is that it is " becoming acquainted with a string 

 of scientific results." I need not pause before this audience to refute 

 such a notion. If the study of modern science did not call for the ex- 

 ercise of all the highest faculties of man ; if it did not give an exercise 

 such as no other study gives to his reasoning as well as his observing 

 powers ; if without it the very study of language itself did not become 

 empty and barren ; if a knowledge of it were not necessary to the 

 solution of all the profoundest philosophical problems with which the 

 mind of man in these generations is occupied — then, indeed, a question 

 might be raised as to the propriety of its introduction into the curricu- 

 lum of liberal study. But if it is this, and more than all this, then 

 it claims more than a subordinate place ; it is no toy for idle hours, 

 no subject to fill up gaps and intervals of time. It claims a right to 

 no less than a full half of all available time and power ; of time for 

 training the student's senses — all left by our older training in worse 

 than Egyptian darkness — of power to be employed in training the 

 reasoning faculties, by processes as rigorous as any the older studies 

 can boast of. Nothing less than this will satisfy the demands of sci- 

 ence as an element in modern liberal education. 



I have already indicated what seems to me to be the only way by 

 which room can be found for the real introduction of science into our 

 scheme of studies. By removing Greek wholly from the list of gen- 

 eral studies to that list of specialties which make up our completed 

 conception of the higher education, after it diverges in different direc- 

 tions ; by relegating Latin to a subordinate instead of a primary place 

 in language-training, we shall find room to place science on an equal 

 footing with literature as an. instrument of general liberal culture ; 

 and I see no other way. And this scheme will have this further ad- 

 vantage, that, for all who carry their education beyond its rudimen- 

 tary stages, it will afford ample time and opportunity for the real mas- 

 tery of at least two of the leading modern languages besides our own : 

 for French, the modern daughter of the Latin — for German, a kindred 

 Teutonic dialect closely related to our own. I am aware that such a 

 scheme for the teaching of modern languages, including our own, so 

 systematically and scientifically, as that the mental discipline de- 

 rived from it shall not be inferior to that derived from the teaching 



