acquiring knowledge, the
tools for employing it, that is to say, reading, writing, and
arithmetic. After that, he believed that a certain amount of
knowledge, of intellectual discipline, and of artistic training should
be conveyed in the elementary schools, and for these purposes he
proposed to teach some rudiments of physical science, drawing, and
singing.

In most respects the progress of primary education in England has been
a continuous progress along these lines suggested by Huxley, and he
may be regarded as in this fashion one of the great shapers of the
destinies of his race, for nothing can have a bearing more important
on the character and fate of a race than the manner of training
provided for the masses of individuals composing it. It is only in the
matter of the religious instruction that the course of events has been
widely different from the neutral exposition of the Bible as suggested
by him. In 1870 a great majority of the people of England who
reflected upon the matter at all, and all those who accepted current
ideas without reflection, accepted the Bible as an inspired, direct,
and simple authority on all great matters of faith and morality.
Therefore, when Huxley, as by far the most important man among those
who advocated a secular education, was an advocate and not in the
least an opponent of Bible teaching, they were well content to let the
matter rest. There were, it is true, a certain number of zealots who
entered the boards with the avowed purpose, on the one hand, of
getting as much dogmatic teaching and interpretation added as it might
be possible to smuggle in, and, on the other, to reduce the simplest
Bible teaching to a minimum. But the vast majority of persons were out
of sympathy with these fanaticisms. Since 1870, however, a gradual
change has occurred in the attitude of the majority to the Bible in
England. The growth of the new criticism and of knowledge of it has
produced the result that now only a small minority of reflecting
people in England accept the Bible in the old simple way; the majority
thinks that it requires interpretation and explanation by the
authority of the Church. And so a new battle over dogma has begun;
moderate Church people no longer accept the compromise of Huxley, but
strive for an interpretation which must be dogmatic, and there is a
new dispute as to what may be regarded as undenominational religion.
When a majority of reasonable persons accepted Huxley's sug