Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 9 Supplement.djvu/60

668 will be considered a man of liberal education and culture while ignorant of the wondrous speculations contained under the terms Matter, Energy, and Biology. We will examine how the present arrangements of the University work. To matriculate, the candidate has to pass in six out of twelve subjects; to take a degree, he has to pass in five out of eleven; of these latter, two are compulsory, namely, Latin and Mathematics. The student who thinks how the degree may be obtained with least work, knows Latin and Mathematics must be taken; therefore, to matriculate, he of course takes Arithmetic, Algebra, Euclid, and Latin; his school training, and the association with compulsory subjects, will probably lead him to select two of the following: Greek, English, Modern Language, Geography, or History; and small is the chance that he will choose Chemistry or a branch of Natural or Physical Science, these subjects in his previous training having been wholly neglected, or at least he has attended, in a desultory manner, a few lectures, success in the matter of which was of no value in giving him a position in the school. With this foundation, what hope is there that, in working for the degree, the student will leave the beaten track and take to science, when he has Greek, English, Modern Language, and History from which to select his optional subjects? In passing the general examination previous to studying for the Law, no science is taken, although its study has an eminently powerful effect in training the juridical faculties, consisting as it does almost wholly of induction and deduction, based on evidence in which prejudice must be allowed no play, and conscientiousness is the only possible means of ordinary progress. The mere facts of science alone, leaving out its value as a high-class mental training, are of enormous value in a large proportion of legal cases.

Science troubles not the sleep of the embryo clergyman, although a little accurate knowledge of the wondrous harmony of the universe would give power to his discourses, and would enable him to show the absurdity of many of the pseudo-scientific arguments of those who neglect the duties which true science and religion alike enforce in the most unmistakable language.

The chemist and druggist may still sell his poisons and antidotes without its being essential that he has ever looked into a book of pure chemistry, or that he should know whether there is any difference between elements and compounds. It seems inconceivable, seeing the improvements effected in this particular in England, that this state of things should be allowed to continue.

New Zealand has nothing resembling the classes in science controlled by the Science and Art Department of the Council of Education, under whose auspices 40,000 papers were worked last year, principally by working-men.