86 
SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
women’s—brains should be trained and strengthened, because, 
in the altered conditions of tilings, it is upon them that we 
depend in the main for livelihood. Not that muscle has 
gone out of use, but simply that it has become subservient to 
the brain. If it be true that “ the pen is mightier than the 
sword,” is it not far more true that the head is mightier than 
the arm, skill is more powerful than strength ? 
Education is the training which fits us for the battle of 
life. The education of the fourteenth century was almost 
wholly physical, because the struggle for existence was a 
physical struggle ; the education of the nineteenth century 
must be in the main mental, since the struggle for existence 
is now mainly solved by its intellectual constituents; not 
forgetting, however, that the healthiest minds reside in 
healthy bodies ; and, still more essential, that for the pro¬ 
duction of healthy children, healthy parents are needed. 
I need hardly say it is no part of my purpose to go over 
the whole ground of the educational question. We have so 
far realised the changing conditions of life, that education, of 
a kind, is well-nigh universal; but the question I have 
often put to myself, and the question I would put to you, is— 
Is the education which we demand and give, that which is 
best suited for its purpose ; are we, in educational matters, on 
the right track ? 
The main distinction between ancient and modern warfare, 
whether in blood or industry, is that the latter is wedded in 
the closest way with physical science (using this term in its 
broadest possible sense). All the great victories of peace 
of this Victorian era have been victories of science; all the 
great victories of war have been victories gained by science. 
If, then, the conflict is so essentially a scientific contest, 
of course the training for the conflict is essentially a scientific 
training ! But is this so ? What part I would ask does 
science play in the education of our people ? What proportion 
of the thirty weekly hours of an average schoolboy’s existence 
is given to physical or biological science, the knowledge of the 
world which surrounds him, of the laws which govern his 
existence, and which will govern him in his struggle for the 
power to live? Is it one-half? No. One-quarter? No. 
Doubtful, even, if it is one-eiglitli in the best of cases, 
and from that it sinks away to nothing ! And yet we 
pride ourselves upon being a practical people, when it is 
doubtful whether one more unpractical, more improvident, 
exists upon the face of this earth. Whence is it, then, that 
this want of appreciation of the teachings of experience 
comes ? » 
(To be continued.) 
