THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 99 



just yet; and they may be safely trusted to find ways 

 of holding their own. 



Assuming that the physical and moral well-being and 

 the stable social order, which are the indispensable con- 

 ditions of permanent industrial development, are secured, 

 there remains for consideration the means of attaining 

 that knowledge and skill without which, even then, the 

 battle of competition cannot be successfully fought. Let 

 us consider how we stand. A vast system of elementary 

 education has now been in operation among us for six- 

 teen years, 20 and has reached all but a very small frac- 

 tion of the population. I do not think that there is 

 any room for doubt that, on the whole, it has worked 

 well, and that its indirect no less than its direct benefits 

 have been immense. But, as might be expected, it 

 exhibits the defects of all our educational systems 

 fashioned as they were to meet the wants of a bygone 

 condition of society. There is a widespread and, I 

 think, well-justified complaint that it has too much to 

 do with books and too little to do with things. I am 

 as little disposed as any one can well be to narrow early 

 education and to make the primary school a mere an- 

 nexe of the shop. And it is not so much in the interests 

 of industry, as in that of breadth of culture, that I 

 echo the common complaint against the bookish and 

 theoretical character of our primary instruction. 



If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a 

 system of education which does nothing for the faculties 

 of observation, which trains neither the eye nor the 

 hand, and is compatible with utter ignorance of the 



20 The Education Bill of 1870 was the beginning of the pres- 

 ent organized system of popular education in England. Huxley 

 has a number of addresses on the general subject of education, 

 one of which, Science and Art, and an extract from another, A 

 Liberal Education, appear in this volume. These and others com- 

 pose Science and Education, Collected Essays, volume III. 



