ng, and ciphering, are
intellectual tools, whose use should, before all things, be learned, and
learned thoroughly; so that the youth may be enabled to make his life
that which it ought to be, a continual progress in learning and in
wisdom.

But, in addition, primary education endeavours to fit a boy out with a
certain equipment of positive knowledge. He is taught the great laws
of morality; the religion of his sect; so much history and geography as
will tell him where the great countries of the world are, what they are,
and how they have become what they are.

Without doubt all these are most fitting and excellent things to teach
a boy; I should be very sorry to omit any of them from any scheme of
primary intellectual education. The system is excellent, so far as it
goes.

But if I regard it closely, a curious reflection arises. I suppose that,
fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any well-to-do Roman citizen
was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own,
and, perhaps, the Greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and
the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time.
Furthermore, I do not think I err in affirming, that, if such
a Christian Roman boy, who had finished his education, could be
transplanted into one of our public schools, and pass through its course
of instruction, he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of
thought; amidst all the new facts he would have to learn, not one would
suggest a different mode of regarding the universe from that current in
his own time.

And yet surely there is some great difference between the civilization
of the fourth century and that of the nineteenth, and still more between
the intellectual habits and tone of thought of that day and this?

And what has made this difference? I answer fearlessly--The prodigious
development of physical science within the last two centuries.

Modern civilization rests upon physical science; take away her gifts to
our own country, and our position among the leading nations of the
world is gone to-morrow; for it is physical science only, that makes
intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force.

The whole of modern thought is steeped in science; it has made its way
into the works of our best poets, and even the mere man of letters, who
affects to ignore and despise science, is unconsciously impregnated with
her spirit, and indebted for his best products to her methods. I believe
t