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4 efficient system of instruction in Natural Science. We must, however, premise some general observations on a matter which lies at the root of the whole subject of Education, and a misconception of which appears to have operated in no small degree, to create those difficulties with which the University has had to contend, and at the same time to bring its teachings into undeserved discredit with those who criticise it from an European point of view and as spectators at a distance.

The only attainable object of general Education is, we take it, to afford the mind such a training in those years in which its powers are approaching maturity, that it may be fitted to turn the experience of after-life to the best account according to its individual grasp and capability. It is not practicable, even were it desirable, to pour into one human brain, whatever its natural capacity, all or even any considerable fraction of the mass of moral, physical, and æsthetic dogmas which experience has taught us to regard as ascertained truths, even leaving out of account all that goes to make up a literary education, the imaginative writings of ancient and modern authors, and the history, told by themselves, of those earlier races, on whose hard experience the superstructure of our own civilization is reared. The three or four years which are all that on an average can be devoted to collegiate study, do not suffice for the acquisition of more than a small amount of what may be known on any one or two selected subjects, and the really important conditions to be fulfiled in laying down an Art’s curriculum, are—that such subjects be selected as will but train the mental powers,—and that they be so taught as to ensure this training. However trite these dicta may seem,—and they certainly make no pretension to novelty,—they are not the less disregarded by the majority of those engaged in school education in England ; in obedience perhaps partly, to the unintelligent demands of a parental public, which is guided by little better than the traditions of its own youth ; to a less extent, a similar disregard obtains here ; but for this very reason it is the more imperative on an independent body, free from the trammels of tradition in its corporate capacity at least, freer perhaps than any similar body elsewhere, and charged with the responsible duty of directing the intellectual progress of the country, to conceive clearly the true aim and means of Intellectual Education. The evident tendency of the present day in England, is to fill a boy’s mind with an indigesta moles of dogma called Natural Science, in addition to the time-honoured Classics and Mathematical Sciences; and probably a crude verbiage, called Modern Languages, unintelligible to any