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most real worth is the consideration; but what will bring most applause,
honour, respect--what will be the most imposing. As throughout life not
what we are but what we shall be thought is the question, so in
education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much
as its extrinsic effect on others; and this being our dominant idea,
direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when
filing his teeth and staining his nails.

The comparative worths of different kinds of knowledge have been as yet
scarcely even discussed. But before there can be a curriculum, we must
determine, as Bacon would have said, the relative value of knowledges.

To this end a measure of value is the first requisite, and here there
can happily be no dispute. How to live?--that is the essential question
for us. To prepare us for complete living is the function which
education is to discharge. We must therefore classify the leading kinds
of activity which constitute human life. In order of importance they are
(1) those which directly minister to self-preservation, (2) those which
by securing the necessaries of life indirectly minister to
self-preservation, (3) those which have for their end the rearing and
discipline of offspring, (4) those which are involved in the maintenance
of proper social and political relations, (5) those miscellaneous
activities which fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to the
gratification of the tastes and feelings.

It can easily be shown that these stand in something like their true
order of subordination, and such should be the order of education. It
must give attention to all of these; greatest where the value is
greatest; less where the value is less; least where the value is least.

Happily that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct
self-preservation is in great part already provided for. Too momentous
to be left to our blundering, nature takes it into her own hands, but
there must be no such thwarting of nature as that by which stupid
school-mistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the
spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in; and so render
them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves in
circumstances of peril.

But more is needed, and it is that we should learn the laws of life and
of health. This depends upon science, yet that increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena which has through successive a