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If we now consider more closely what are the specific objects 
to be aimed at by any rational System of Education, we find 
that they may be naturally discussed under three heads: — (1) 
Discipline, or the training and development of the mental and 
physical faculties as so many instruments of the human 
organism : (2) Practical Utility, or the acquisition of certain 
knowledges, which will be of actual practical value to the 
individual in his struggle for existence, and will secondarily 
enable him to be of use to his fellow-creatures : (3) Spiritual 
Culture, or the improvement and development of the higher 
moral and emotional faculties, together with the unfolding of 
the ajsthetic capabilities of the individual. In considering 
the educational value of Science under the above three heads, 
no digression will be made into the controversy as to whether 
the above objects of all sound education are attained more 
perfectly by a scientific or a non-scientific training alone, or by 
a judicious intermingling of the two. All that will be attempted 
here is to show, very briefly, that Science has strong claims to 
be regarded as an educational power in all of these three 
departments. No unprejudiced thinker can hesitate to admit, 
most fully, that an ideal education is many-sided, and that no 
knowledge, however profound, of a single subject, entitles any 
man to the honourable designation of “educated,” in the 
widest and truest sense of the word. The learned German 
philologist who failed to recognize what potatoes were, on 
seeing them in their native condition, in spite of his enormous 
erudition, was “uneducated,” in the same sense as is the man 
of science who is wholly devoid of literary culture. To be 
altogether “ teres atque rotundas ” one must know something 
of many things, and everything of something. We have to 
deal, however, with a state of matters very far removed from . 
the ideal. The only real practical question lies in determining 
whether those individuals — and there are unfortunately many 
of them — who have time and opportunity for examining but 
one of the facets of the ci'.ystal of knowledge, should rather 
attend to the scientific or to the non-scientific branches of 
study. Into this much-vexed question, no excursion need be 
made here and now. No further general conclusion seems to 
be safe, except that even the most elementary education should 
have some flavouring and tincture of both kinds of knowledge ; 
and it might be predicted, without rashness, that the Sciences 
are likely very materially to alter their complexion, before this 
question will be really ripe for solution in any final sense. All 
that is proposed here is to cursorily examine how far the 
Sciences fulfil the three great objects of education, without 
