uire a knowledge of this, or any other branch of
physical science? What is the use, it is said, of attempting to make
physical science a branch of primary education? Is it not probable that
teachers, in pursuing such studies, will be led astray from the
acquirement of more important but less attractive knowledge? And, even if
they can learn something of science without prejudice to their
usefulness, what is the good of their attempting to instil that knowledge
into boys whose real business is the acquisition of reading, writing, and
arithmetic?

These questions are, 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 acc