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SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
truism to say this; yet let us ask ourselves what it means. 
Does it not mean this, that a child is born into the world with 
a certain range of faculties and powers—physical, intellectual, 
and moral. If these faculties are neglected they will lie in 
abeyance, be gradually deadened, ultimately lost. The true 
dutv of education is to take each and all of these faculties, 
neglecting no one of them, and to cultivate them to the 
greatest attainable height of perfection. Those subjects are 
of the greatest educational importance which, effort for effort, 
produce the greatest educational results. “ Give me a fact, sir,” 
says the practical man. “ Give me a thought,” says the true 
educationalist. As I have said elsewhere*—“ To use the 
power of thought and reasoning, this is a prime factor in true 
education ; and I would rather have a man who thinks 
wrongly than one who does not think at all. There is hope 
for the one, none for the other. Once get principles and 
reasons well grounded and the facts marshal themselves. 
Facts without reasons are like a fleet of vessels without crews, 
capable of no concerted and intelligent action, but never¬ 
theless readily capable of mutual destruction.” 
I think the child himself teaches us the true method 
of education. How delighted at the discovery of something 
new, how receptive of impressions, how quick in attempting 
generalisations,—probably inaccurate, but none the less 
educational for that. It is onlv when vou come to crush the 
«/ 
child’s life into things that it does not and cannot understand 
or appreciate, that its brightness becomes dulled, its receptive¬ 
ness deadened. The child has taught you the grand 
educational principle that observation is the first phase of 
intellectual education. 
And here it appears to me that the special value of science 
in education comes in, viz., that all sciences are based on 
observation, and, if there be any truth in our preliminaries, 
that branch of science which is most provocative of observation 
should hold pre-eminence in early educational training. 1 
cannot help, therefore, venturing to think that the handiwork 
of the “practical man” is to be seen in the comparative 
monopoly of school scientific education by Chemistry and 
Physics. I do not wish to say one word against the 
importance of either of these subjects; but what I mean is this. 
The practical man sees that Chemistry, for example, has 
brought about great economic results, by which much wealth 
has accrued to the nation, and, therefore, by one of those 
intellectual efforts peculiar to him, imagines that it must be 
* Pharmaceutical Conference, 1886; see “Pharmaceutical Journal,” 
Sept. 18, p. 237 et seq. 
