ON SCIENCE AND ART 143 



dozen numbers of the "J ournal of Education," you will 

 find a series of very interesting and remarkable papers, 

 by gentlemen who are practically engaged in the busi- 

 ness of education in our great public and other schools, 

 telling us what is doing in these schools, and what is 

 their experience of the results of scientific education 

 there, so far as it has gone. I am not going to trouble 

 you with an abstract of those papers, which are well 

 worth your study in their fullness and completeness, but 

 I have copied out one remarkable passage, because it 

 seems to me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly 

 ventured to say about the value of science, both as to 

 its subject-matter and as to the discipline which the 

 learning of science involves. It is from a paper by Mr. 

 Worthington one of the masters at Clifton, 5 the repu- 

 tation of which school you know well, and at the head 

 of which is an old friend of mine, the Rev. Mr. Wilson 

 to whom much credit is due for being one of the first, 

 as I can say from my own knowledge, to take up this 

 question and work it into practical shape. What Mr. 

 Worthington says is this: 



"It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the 

 information imparted by certain branches of science; 

 it modifies the whole criticism of life made in maturer 

 years. The study has often, on a mass of boys, a cer- 

 tain influence which, I think, was hardly anticipated, and 

 to which a good deal of value must be attached an 

 influence as much moral as intellectual, which is shown 

 in the increased and increasing respect for precision of 

 statement, and for that form of veracity which consists 

 in the acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real 

 effect to find that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and 

 the attention given to experimental lectures, at first su- 



3 Clifton College is one of the principal modern English pub- 

 lic schools. It is located near Bristol. 



