Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/443

Rh is a mistaken and injurious one. We desire to make the chief subject of education both in school and in college a knowledge of nature as set forth in the sciences which are spoken of as physics, chemistry, geology and biology. We think that all education should consist in the first place of this kind of knowledge, on account of its commanding importance both to the individual and to the community. We think that every man of even a moderate amount of education should have acquired a sufficient knowledge of these subjects to enable him at any rate to appreciate their value, and to take an interest in their progress and application to human life. And we think further that the ablest youth of the country should be encouraged to proceed to the extreme limit of present knowledge in one or other branch of this knowledge of nature so as to become makers of new knowledge, and the possible discoverers of enduring improvements in man's control of nature. No one should be educated so as to be ignorant of the importance of these things; and it should not be possible for the greatest talent and mental power to be diverted to other fields of activity through the fact that the necessary education and opportunity in the pursuit of the knowledge of nature are withheld. The strongest inducements in the way of reward and consideration ought, we believe, to be placed before a young man in the direction of nature-knowledge rather than in the direction of other and far less important subjects of study.

In fact, we should wish to see the classical and historical scheme of education entirely abandoned, and its place taken by a scheme of education in the knowledge of nature.

At the same time let me hasten to say that few, if any of us—and certainly not he who now addresses you—would wish to remove the acquirement of the use of languages, the training in the knowledge and perception of beauty in literary art, and the feeding of the mind with the great stories of the past, from a high and necessary position in every grade of education.

It is a sad and apparently inevitable accompaniment of all discussion of this matter that those who advocate a great and leading position for the knowledge of nature in education are accused of desiring to abolish all study of literature, history and philosophy. This is, in reality, so far from being the case that we should most of us wish to see a serviceable knowledge of foreign languages, and a real acquaintance with the beauties of English and other literature, substituted for the present unsuccessful efforts to teach effectively either the language or literature of the Greeks and Romans.

It should not be for one moment supposed that those who attach the vast importance which we do to the knowledge of nature imagine that man's spirit can be satisfied by exclusive occupation with that knowledge. We know, as well as any, that man does not live by bread