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what we should teach them is not a new one. It was again 
Tyndall, who, after pointing out that in our earliest youth almost 
all of our enjoyments are physical, and that the confectioner’s 
shop occupies in our ideas the foreground of human happiness, 
remarks that there grows up in our minds, as thought ripens, the 
desire to penetrate into the character and causes of the phenomena 
presented to our observation, but we do not gratify this desire. 
An instance which he gives is typical : “ A few days ago,” he 
wrote, “ a master of arts, who is still a young man, and, there- 
fore, the recipient of a modern education, stated to me, that until 
he had reached the age of twenty years he had never been taught 
anything whatever regarding natural phenomena or natural law.” 
Twelve years of his life previously had been spent exclusively 
among the ancients. Now valuable as the ancient learning may 
be, it is surely not wise “ to sacrifice the hopes and aspirations of 
the Present out of deference to the Past.” A man who has 
occupied a notable position in the affairs of our country once said 
within my hearing, a Canadian, be it remembered, that he was 
seven years old before he knew there was such a language as the 
English, and that he was twenty before he learned a word of it. 
I refer to this as showing limitations which may be placed con- 
sciously or unconsciously upon the instruction which is given the 
young, and upon the ease with which the avenues to real know- 
ledge may be closed by custom, by prejudice, or perhaps by some 
paternal idea that we may know too much. Against such an 
idea as this the existence of our Natural History Society is a 
constant protest. Although it is thirty years since Tyndall 
uttered his complaint, the cause is not yet removed. In that 
notable work, written only four or five years ago, in which Haeckel 
endeavours to solve “ The Riddle of the Universe,” he complains 
that the knowledge of modern science is not applied in the great 
concerns of life, (in the courts of justice, in the field of politics, in 
the work of government, and he justifies his complaint by the 
observation that we can only arrive at a correct knowledge of the 
structure of the social body, the state, through a scientific know- 
ledge of the structure and life of the individuals who compose it, 
and the cells of which they are in turn composed. The first step 
in the direction which he would take is to reform the schools. 
