Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/636

 and the times are not greatly changed since he wrote although a great majority of the adult males throughout the kingdom are found to show some interest in the breeding, rearing, or training of animals of one kind or other, it rarely happens that one hears anything said about the rearing of children. I believe the subject is seldom mentioned in school-board debates. Hence it happens that Herbert Spencer's book has had a smaller circulation than many novels, and that the 1893 edition is but the thirty-fourth instead of the three hundred and fortieth thousand. After very fully discussing the question "What knowledge is of most worth?" he arrives at the conclusion that science is, and eloquently advocates the claims of the order of knowledge termed scientific. The following are eminently instructive passages in his essay: "While every one is ready to indorse the abstract proposition that instruction fitting youths for the business of life is of high importance, or even to consider it of supreme importance, yet scarcely any inquire what instruction will so fit them. It is true that reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught with an intelligent appreciation of their uses. But when we have said this we have said nearly all. While the great bulk of what else is acquired has no bearing on the industrial activities, an immensity of information that has a direct bearing on the industrial activities is entirely passed over. For, leaving out only some very small classes, what are all men employed in? They are employed in the production, preparation, and distribution of commodities. And on what does efficiency in the production, preparation, and distribution of commodities depend? It depends on the use of methods fitted to the respective natures of these commodities; it depends on an adequate acquaintance with their physical," chemical, and vital properties, as the case may be: that is, it depends on science. This order of knowledge, which is in great part ignored in our school courses, is the order of knowledge underlying the right performance of those processes by which civilized life is made possible. Undeniable as is this truth, there seems to be no living consciousness of it: its very familiarity makes it unregarded. . . . That which our school courses leave almost entirely out, we thus find to be that which most nearly concerns the business of life. Our industries would cease, were it not for the information which men begin to acquire, as they best may, after their education is said to be finished. And were it not for the information from age to age accumulated and spread by unofficial means, these industries would never have existed. Had there been no teaching but such as goes on in our public schools, England would now be what it was in feudal times. That increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomena which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common laborer