ioo THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably re- 

 garded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider 

 that the instruction and training which are lacking are 

 exactly those which are of most importance for the 

 great mass of our population, the fault becomes almost 

 a crime, the more that there is no practical difficulty in 

 making good these defects. There really is no reason 

 why drawing should not be universally taught, and it 

 is an admirable training for both eye and hand. Ar- 

 tists are born, not made; but everybody may be taught 

 to draw elevations, plans, and sections; and pots and 

 pans are as good, indeed better, models for this purpose 

 than the Apollo Belvedere. The plant is not expensive; 

 and there is this excellent quality about drawing of the 

 kind indicated, that it can be tested almost as easily and 

 severely as arithmetic. Such drawings are either right 

 or wrong, and if they are wrong the pupil can be made 

 to see that they are wrong. From the industrial point 

 of view, drawing has the further merit that there is 

 hardly any trade in which the power of drawing is not 

 of daily and hourly utility. In the next place, no good 

 reason, except the want of capable teachers, can be 

 assigned why elementary notions of science should not 

 be an element in general instruction. In this case, again, 

 no expensive or elaborate apparatus is necessary. The 

 commonest thing a candle, a boy's squirt, a piece of 

 chalk in the hands of a teacher who knows his busi- 

 ness, may be made the starting-point whence children 

 may be led into the regions of science as far as their 

 capacity permits, with efficient exercise of their obser- 

 vational and reasoning faculties on the road. If object 

 lessons often prove trivial failures, it is not the fault 

 of object lessons, but that of the teacher, who has not 

 found out how much the power of teaching a little 

 depends on knowing a great deal, and that thoroughly; 



