, and will be, very commonly asked, for they arise
from that profound ignorance of the value and true position of physical
science, which infests the minds of the most highly educated and
intelligent classes of the community. But if I did not feel well assured
that they are capable of being easily and satisfactorily answered; that
they have been answered over and over again; and that the time will come
when men of liberal education will blush to raise such questions,--I
should be ashamed of my position here to-night. Without doubt, it
is your great and very important function to carry out elementary
education; without question, anything that should interfere with the
faithful fulfilment of that duty on your part would be a great evil; and
if I thought that your acquirement of the elements of physical science,
and your communication of those elements to your pupils, involved any
sort of interference with your proper duties, I should be the first
person to protest against your being encouraged to do anything of the
kind.

But is it true that the acquisition of such a knowledge of science as
is proposed, and the communication of that knowledge, are calculated to
weaken your usefulness? Or may I not rather ask, is it possible for you
to discharge your functions properly without these aids?

What is the purpose of primary intellectual education? I apprehend
that its first object is to train the young in the use of those tools
wherewith men extract knowledge from the ever-shifting succession of
phenomena which pass before their eyes; and that its second object is to
inform them of the fundamental laws which have been found by experience
to govern the course of things, so that they may not be turned out
into the world naked, defenceless, and a prey to the events they might
control.

A boy is taught to read his own and other languages, in order that he
may have access to infinitely wider stores of knowledge than could ever
be opened to him by oral intercourse with his fellow men; he learns to
write, that his means of communication with the rest of mankind may be
indefinitely enlarged, and that he may record and store up the knowledge
he acquires. He is taught elementary mathematics, that he may understand
all those relations of number and form, upon which the transactions of
men, associated in complicated societies, are built, and that he may
have some practice in deductive reasoning.

All these operations of reading, writi