Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/299

 THE STUDY OF A COUNTRY.

The subject upon which I have undertaken to speak to you may seem at first rather inconclusive, and I do not know that the title of my address exactly expresses my meaning. Let me try to explain what it is. The whole process of education is full of fallacies. We can only learn by abstracting ourselves from the actual world; from the world which is complicated, whilst the subjects which we are taught are simple. Every subject, whatever it may be, is only made into a subject which can be taught by taking it forcibly out of its context. We learn more or less about a certain science, and we think that that science has an existence of its own. But as a matter of fact this is not the case. The world goes on as one great whole, and the abstractions that we make for the purposes of our own convenience, the particular branches into which we divide knowledge, are, in so far as they are abstractions, really deceptive.

This is a truth which any one who has been subjected to the discipline of a university training will readily allow. It is generally said of young men when they leave the university that they are consummate prigs.