ess 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, writing, 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 civilisation 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 ce