The North Wales Express

OLD WAYS AND- NEW IN EDUCATION" ADDRESS BY DR ALEXANDER HILL. At the closing ceremony tit the session 1897-8 of the University College of North Wales, on Wednesday, Dr Alexander Hill, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cam- bridge, delivered the following address on "Old Wavs and iNew in Education" :—In the admirable address of the late Professor of Poetry at Oxford, which was read to the College last October, at a time when its author, alas! was suffering from the illness of which three weeks later he died. Pro- fessor Palgrave compared the old ways with the new in education, and made an eloquent appeal for the retention of the old. "Not that the old ways were incapable of improve- ment." "We must stand upon the old ways, that we may discover new ones." But the spirit of the old system is to be maintained; the ideal from which modern university training, especially on the Continent and in America, has departed so far is still to be kept in view: "It had one immense value; it was a training, not for specialities, not for professional success, but for life. And our own universities hitherto, at least, have fol- lowed this higher ideal. They are differen- tiated from those of the rest of the world, by the small extent to which they have been, or still are, places of professional education. When Principal Reichel honoured me with an invitation to speak to you this afternoon, he sent me a copy of Professor Palgrave's address, and it was not unnatural, perhaps, seeing that my own training since leaving school, has been so different to that of Pro- fessor Palgrave, and considering that it has been my work to train university students for a definite profession, the profession of medicine-it was not unnatural, perhaps, that I should ask myself the question: What are the ideals common to all forms of educa- tion, and how far can we adapt the means of education to particular ends? Granted that in public schools we have to deal with undi- fferentiated classes of boys, boys whose apti- tudes have not been discovered as yet, whose careers are uncertain, how can we fit them I "best for any and every career? How soon they have, selected their professions should we begin to prepare them for their life-work ? What guiding lines can we dis- cern which, radiating from the common boy- life. lead most directly to the several forms of human activity in which the grown men will occupy their future years ? All systems of education are attempts to answer the questions which I have proposed. In the hastv generalizations of an hour, I can only hope that my own particular experience may "hed a dimmer of light upon the problem. There is not time to be exact, much less to trace the snbiect in all its aspects. I can merely speak of the men who have been un- der my own care,and of the effect which their previous training seemed to have had in pre- paring them for their professional work. Which of the boys from public schools, or men who have continued their non-profes- sional training at the University by taking an Arts degree, in classics or mathematics, in philosophy or history, have shown the greatest capacity for conquering the science of medicine or rather (to speak more ccr- rectly) for mastering the neural sciences upon which medicine is based ? In its broad- est distinction the question to be answered is this ARE BOYS BETTER TRAINED for the natural sciences by the old wavs or the new? The definition of eld wars is not so simple as it may seem to be, although every one will be ready to define them as the study of the classics. The old ways meant harking back to the knowledge of Greeks and Romans, the new way is the study of the world in which we live, the phenomena ot nature and of life, the fac Vs of science and the politics, economics, language sndhtenure of the nations now extant. Is the lad to look back to the men of old time or around him at the world in which he lives? When Europe emerged from the dirk ages at the great awakening, the Renaissance, the sen- sitive intellects of the 15th ard 16th centur- ies, discovered an enchanted realm, a rea.m which for a thousand rears hid slept in darkness of monastic libraries, curtained by cobwebs and overbid with » soft coverlet of dust. Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, had slept in peace, unheadful of the inces- sant migrations of armed barbarians, whose noise and violence had put a stop to the studies of the worid. When order was re- established, leisure was again afforded for the amenities of life and lo! the delighted scholar found that the sages of Greece and Rome had known more ,and had thought more shrewdly than any of the men of his own day. No wonder he went to them, instead of re- investigating: Nature for himself; no won- der he endeavoured to assimilate their thoughts instead of indulging in specula tons of his own no wonder he invented iheir writings with almost Scriptural authority. The revival of the classics was the necessary outcome of revived intellectual life. But the classical tradition sti 1 dominates edu cateion.a although the world has long ago ad- vanced in science—it is unsafe, perhaps, to add. and in philosophy also-far past the level to which the classic wri. ers hfd at- tained The Renaissance found its mspi- ratjton in the classics but has lony- been absorbed into the body of human thought, we still g £ not for their substance any longer, but tor their form. How far is this persistence in the old ways wise? Cannot we set aside tra- ■ditions and treat every child as a "ew pro^- lem, a plastic brain, to be moulded into shape most suitable for the work of a doctor or a lawyer, a banker or a farmer, as the case mav be? The use in the 19th century of the old ways would seem a strange anachronism to the men who discovered them four i centuries Rgo. If time allowed it would be an interesting studv to follow the several stages in a process which resulted in replac- ing the spirit of the classical revival, by for- malism in putting the effigies of the ancient writers in the place of their living thinking selves, in converting scholarship into a shib- boleth'. I it ay seem to overstate the case, but I wish before attempting to defend the CLASSICAL EDUCATION, cn the «-ifest of all grounds, the success of its results, to express most clearly my conviction that not one in ten thousand of those who learn Greek and Latin, reap from their studies anv of the benefits for the sake of which the scholars of the Renaissance sought profi- ciency in these tongues. The real purpose of classic study was soon lost sight of. At the universities we find bv the 17th century that 2ramirar had usurped the place of language, • the rules of rhetoric have replaced the study of stvle, dialectics did duty for logic. Ue- SoXnV, and Cicero were the mcd9 S 1°" a cellege declamation, but it was the man who caught their tricks that won the prize, not he who learned from their elcquence how to move mankind But 10! no common orator can hope The envied silver cup within his scope. Not that cur hands much eloquence require Th' Athenian's glowing style or Tully s fire. A manner char or warm is useless since We do not try by speaking to convince. The unreality of the work produced its in- able results, teaching grew halt-heart-ea and examinations degenerated into a farce. How far the latter had degenerated by the r, middle of the 18th century we can show by a few quotations from an essay on the sub- | iect by an Oxford don, Vicesimus Knox. Had the description applied to my own uni- versity I should have hesitated to read it to you. Two students are "doing generals," that is to say, opposing and responding in a disputation in the public schools. They are I provided with "strings," i.e., with sets of syllogisms which have been handed down from undergraduate to undergraduate through many generations, "foolish syllo- gisms on foolish subjects of the formation or the signification of which the respondent and opponent se'dom know more than an infant in swaddling clothes." "The two doughty disputants go into a larre dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs, with walls and wainscote decorated with the names of former dispu- tants, who, to divert the tedious hours, cut out their names with their penknives or wrote verses with a pencil. Here they sit in mean desks opposite to each other from one o'clock until three. Not onca in a hun- dred times does any officer enter; and if he does he hears one syllogism or two and then makes a bow and departs, as he came and re- mained in solemn silence. Ihe disputants r then return to the amusement of cutting the desks, carving their names or reading Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' or some other edifying novel." Generals performed the undergraduate becomes a "soph" and has only the final examination to look forward to. For this, which is called "answering under i bachelor," he selects three masters of arts as examiners of his choice. "Usually they are pot-companions of the candidate; for it is reckoned good management to get ac- quainted with two or three jolly young mas- ters of arts ana supply them well with port ¡ previously to the examination. Examiners and candidates often converse on the last drinking bout or on horses, or read the news- paper or a novel, or divert themselves as well as they can in any manner, till the clock strikes eleven, when all parties descend and the testimonium is signed by the masters." Tl- is is a description of the very DARKEST AGE IN UNIVERSITY LIFE, when many of the professors did not pretend to lecture, and when in the case of the pro- fessorship of morality, the emoluments were divided between the proctors of each year, "since the very nature of their office must lead them to a most satisfactory discharge of the real duties of a profeor in moral philosophy." The life led by undergradu- ates appears from records of the time to show that the proctors considered it their duty to interfere as little as possible with the I men undar their charge. This was, as said, the very darkest period 0: university life, but the degradation of the university was largely, if not entirely, due to the abuse of the classics, to the formalism which fol- j lowed on their study. It was a dark shadow cast behind it by- the Renaissance, when all that the classics could give bad been gar- nered by (scholars who nevertheless believed that there was no other source of light or learning. Well might Pope ridicule the scholars of his day,- How parts relate to parts, or they to whole, The body's harmony, the beaming so'11 Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see When man's. whole frame is obvious to a flea. Aristotle was the source of all knowledge, to fence with question and answer, thrust and parry, according to the rules of the schools, with no view ot eliciting truth, but for the sake of showing a knowledge of the game, was the object of training—Probo, negatur; Datur, distingo; Negatur turn minor, turn sequela Quoad hoc, quoad illud, formaliter, materialiter, actualiter, poteitialiter, en- titative, quidditative, and a host of other conventional strokes, "which," says Amhurst, describing one of these disputa- tions in 1721, "I would explain to my Eng- lish reader with all my heart, if I could." What can men be in classical study which has enabled it to survive the degradation through which it passed in the X v Ajith cen- tury, and to assert its claim to be regarded ev;o now Pi., without a rival as a system of training? Befcre attempting to answer L 1!1 this question let us glance at the posL on which classics occupied in the schools at the period when, at the universities, they had fallen so low. Since we have the ever-living chronicle ot Samuel Johnson's life, let us take our illustration from that. For a year and a half Johnson kept "AN ACAD.I.,di i FOR YOUNG GENTLE- MEN," which could not be described as a success, even with David Garrick as one of his three pupils. The great man succeeded no better as the head of an academy than previously as assistant-maiiter in a grammar school. Tact and repose are primary requisites for securing the confidence of children. John- son was moody, irascible, subject to jerky movements, even, described sometimes ats convulsions. But his views on the subject of teaching are entitled to respect, and he was himself a monument of mental training. His memory was almost illimitable his power of clothing his thoughts in words, his style, the classic for the English language— ] his wit keen enough to make six volumes of biography perennially good reading. When Langton asked him how he came to acquire so accurate a knowledge of Latin, Johnson' re plied, "My master whipt me very well, without that, sir, I should have done no- thing." "I would rather have the rod a gen- eral'terror to all to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus or thus you will be esteemed above your brothens and sisters, j The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself whereas by exciting emulation and comparison of superiority. vou lay the foundations of lasting mischief. ( Johnson's theory of education, which was after all merelv the theory of his day, may almost be summed up in two words, Latin and the Rod. Learning riade attractive, lost all its virtue. It was no longer a dis-, clpline. It was no longer a vehicle for the greatest of all lessons. Do this because, vou are told to do it, and realize from the first that the results will be distinctly un- pleasant if vou don't." This was a oug diet to be brought up upon. W hat a con- trast to the SUGAR-CANDY LESSONS of the present day! The rod has been turned into fire-wood within the last twenty years; but the classical tradition still lingers ?n our grammar schools, and, therefore, if one enters, now-a-days, a gocd preparatory school, where the master understands his business—the securing of as many scholar- ships as possible at the frreat endowed schools—we find that the boys learn Latin in the morning, Latin in the afternoon, and spend the evening in Latin pre- paration. I need hardly, point the contrast between this use of Latin as the only lesson and the system ad- opted in the public elementary schools where the usefulness of the knowledge gained is the first consideration, while the second is the possibility of rendering pleasant the pro- cess cf acquisition. I have given Johnson as an illustration because he stands at the, op- posite pole to the modem educationist not because I want to hold him up as a master of the theory of education. He was very dogmatic. The doctrinaire of to-day is ° even more dogmatic. All writers upon education are, so far as my experience goes, assured of their logic. For every theorist there is but one system of educa- tion-his own.- Other schemes are, if not pernicious, at any rate culpably insufficient. Again, I have endeavoured to accentuate a contrast. At the Universities so soon as the real awakening, the Elizabethan age, was passed, scholarships meant formalism, the laborious acquisition of the lore of super- setted sages, barren disputations, frivolous quibbling in the schools. These were the old ways; but I need not take up your time at Bangor by describing to you the new. At boys' school THE OLD WAYS MEANT DRUDGERY, dreary monotonous study of the materials of which a dead language was constructed- mere investigation of its bricks and mortar, with never a glance at the beauty of the edifice, still less an attempt at converse with the great masters by whom and for whose housing it was built. And this dreary task was plied in constant terror of the rod. The spirit of emulation, which now-a-days is the schoolmaster's surest stumulus, a force to which he trusts to stir his scholars rather than to leading-rein or whip, this spirit in Johnson's eyes was a vice to be repressed. When a philosopher formulates a law he tests it by application not to nearly allied ex- amples, but by the most divergent phenomena which ex hypothesi should come within its scope. My object is to ascertain the laws so far as a random paper allows of such an enquiry upon which the science of educa- tion shgpld be based. I can hope to do little more than state a negation and re- cognize the wisdom of not attempting any synthetic task. What is there in child- humaaiity which enables it not only to sur- vive but have intellectually to thrive under such opposite conditions as Latin, Latin, Latin driven in with the rod, and the modern ideal of attractive lessons varied so frequent- ly as to cause no strain to the attention and so obviously useful in their fruits as to com- mend themselves to the judgment of the child. A prejudice singularly prevalent in the present day is the mistaken notion that the object of teaching is to impart knowledge. The boy goes to school at eight years old with a brain of say 1150 cubic -centimeters capacity. At 16 his brain capacity has in- creased to 1300 cubic centimeters. If every millimeter of this increased space stores away a page of "useful information" is he any the wiser for his stores ? By no means. "KNOWLEDGE COMES, BUT WISDOM I LINGERS." His brain is no better than a I lumber room, if he have not the power of assorting, comparing, combining his facts. He had much better have a Whittaker's Al- manack in his pocket than the Encyclopedia Britannica in his he id. Ah! but to have the pcwer cf remembering what ycu wish to remember—details of business, the family histories and peculiarities of your clients and patients, the gems cf thought which you snatch from the pages of poet and prophet— that is something! That must be cultivated at all ccsts-even at the cost of having to learn and afterwards forget the length of the rivers in Europe, or the tables cf irregular verbs of all languages, ancient and modern. A first charge on the teacher's care should be therefore the cultivation of an available memory. A memory which may be relied upon to do what is wanted. The late Pro- fessor of Geology at University College, Lon- don, Prcfessor Morris, told me he had at cne time infinite difficulty in remembering the Latin names-of fossils—but he gave himself a. list of 5,000 and learnt them by heart—as r. list, and not in their application to parti- cular animals or plants; after that his memory gave him no more trouble. The memcry, like a cJt, must be broken to har- ness, but it matters little ii the Training whether you put behind it p. brushwood h-ar- row or a coster's cart. When broken in it must draw whatever kind of lead you choose to give it fcr a load it must have. "Nihil in intellect' qucd non prius in serssu fuit." There is no thinking without materials to work into thoughts. The mind does not make bricks without straw. The raw materials of thought must be collected. But to think. How is a lad to acquire the power to think. Not it seems to me by some of the methods now in vogue. "Modern edu- cation' for the most p-rt signifies giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of impcrtance to them," siys Ruskin. I entirely disagree with Ruskin in his estimate cf modern education. Its tendency—I might almost say the tendency of modern life, ii to teach people not to think at all. How often is the child asked to think at school ? It is all made, so plain, so simple that he is merely required to assimilate his teacher's thoughts. And do people in after life sit down to think? Have they not an irritating consciousness of want of occupation when they find themselves without a newspaper in their bands. Give them this and thev slide along the thoughts of its contributors. 61 columns, lo,000 lines, OYER 1000 YARDS OF PRINT FOR ONE PENNY! This is the teacher's real problem how to teach boys and girls—lads at college—men and women, to think. Which of the two ex- tremes of method with which we started gives the best result ? By painful experience I know what the lads to whom we give our science-scholarships at Cambridge, who may be locked upon as the highest product of the modern side, are often hopelessly beaten on their own ground during their University course by others who come to College with no knowledge at all of the subjects in which they are to be ultimately examined. Despite the extraordinarily accurate and ex- tensive knowledge which science scholars often show in their scholarship examination, their want of mental training frequently causes them to fail utterly when they come to the difficult parts of their subjects. They have a magnificent test-tube knowledge of Chemistry, they have thoroughly mastered the elementary formulae of physics, you could not hope for a better knowledge cf the elements of botam- and zoology but as soon as they leave the realm of facts and figures and find themselves in a. region in which they require a nice appreciation of the relative cogency or arguments-a close following of a train of reasoning-they are like clodhoppers en a glacier, without feet to climb or hearts to dare. They will never reach the other side, unless there be a demonstrator or "ccach" at hand to take up their dead-weights and carry them across. Science-scholars are apt to cause their tutors the gravest dis- appointment, but it dces not follow that the fault is at the door of science as a means of training. In some cases it is the method cf seleeang scholars which is at fault. The lad who gets the scholarship is not a "lad of parts," but a boy who has been allowed by his teachers to desert the crdirary work of the school- curriculum at the earliest possible dote in order that he mav be crammed with scientific facts and taught hew to show off his knowledge in the most impressive way. Science taught in a scientific way may be mcde the means of developing great mental power. That Classical training has sufficed to form the minds of some of the world's world's greatest thinkers no one can cloubt, but it may be questioned whether the result t was due to the .sufficiency of clns ic-, as a train- ing, or to their inestimable value as a disci- pline, for it is as a discipline that Classies are to be extolled. When the great Greek question was raging at Cambridge the argu- 1:1 9 ments for the retention of the elder, the stronger, and the more beautiful cf the Classic tongues were of the weakest. "It is a shibboleth," its supporters said; "we, who aro cultured, know Greek!" "Without' it a man cannot properly understand his own language;' "A knowledge of Greek opens the door to the greatest treasure of thought the world has ever acquired." "Without a knowledge of Greek no man can read the New Testament in the original." These are the arguments in [rder cf importance. The one which carried most weight in deciding that Greek shall remain compulsory may be answered first, and in Socratic fashion. What indivi- dual is there whom you would trust to ap- proach as near to the meaning of the original text of Scripture as the united wisdom of the whole body of translators and revisers has done? A man who does not wish to mis- apprehend its meaning had better read his Bible in the vulgar tongue. That Greek opens the door to the most graceful and enobling literature the world has ever pro- duced is a weightier-sounding argument • but who having the key to this treasure- house ever enters in ? Of the tens of thou- sands of boys who every year learn Greek and Latin, how many use their knowledge in after life for the study of the thoughts enshrined in the literature of the past? Thatwe can- not understand our own language without a knowledge of the Classics is an argument even more easily disposed of. If we spcke French or Spanish this contention could be maintained. But English! A medley of Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian, must be learned indeed its etymology we must be learned indeed. Would anyone trust to his Latin to tell him how many ts to put in letters cr ns in penny ? Lastly it is urged that the Classics have set the standard in style. It used to be so in the times of Milton, Johnson, Macaulay; it is so no longer. Less often than formerly, even at the University, the criticism is passed on Stevenson or Kipling—that he is a clever writer but no scholar. Would anyone read bim jf be were? Fancy "Treasure Island" or "Plain Tales from the Hills" done into JOHNSONESE! The end of the century has developed a. style of its own v, ich bears but little resem- blance to that of Demosthenes or Cicero. happened once to be in the drawing room of a lrdy who greatly distinguished herself in the classica- tripos, when there entered the room a gentleman of the "old school," a man of whom it is commonly said that he has seen every quarter of the globe and governed every portion that he has seen. With stately courtesy he saluted his hostess in phrases culled from Horace. She drew her- self up with an air of shyness, mingled with resentment, which reminded me forcibly of young Welshwoman of whom I aked m way in the mountains of ^lid-W ales—it was twenty years ago, before school boards had levelled all distinctions of language and race—my raised hat and most respectful en- quiry elicited only two words in response, "DIM SASSENACH." But who that knows this lady, or knows I might almost say any one who has distin- guished herself or himself in the study of ancient letters, would doubt the value of the training ? The effect upon the mind re- mains, although the means by which it wa; produced may have been discarded. Homer and Aeschvlus, Virgil and Horace, may keep company in the box-room with the dumb- bells and Indian clubs which helped to ren- der the muscles strong and the figure lithe and graceful, but the mind. testifies to,the use of intellectual gymnastics as the body to phyaical. No! the real argument in favour of the classics has escaped the notice of their most ardent supporters. They over- look the quality which will for long I trust give them a prominent place in our educa- tional system,to wit their almost perfect use- lessness. The boy who conjugates amo, am- avi, amatum, amare has no thought of turn- ing his knowledge to advantage. Were it j'aime or ich liebe there would be possibili- ties; but amo! Why he would not be un- derstood even in Italy. The dead languages supply mental training only. The student requires to remember, and in a very real sense be requires to think. He cannot con- struct a Latin sentence from the fragments which he has half unconsciously caught from his teacher. He must think it out for him- self. It is a real education-a mental train- ing only-and no hoalthilv constituted boy needs any stimulus other than the wish to please his teacher to induce him to set about his task. Turning from methods to aims, it may, I think, be regarded as an axiom that up to a certain stage education should not take into account the future occupation of the child, or even of the adolescent. The faculty of observation, memory, and power of thought have to be cultivated in all, with- out regard to the uses to which they will be put. z, Power of thought is perhaps an am- bitious expression. Let us call it in the earlier stages of training the ability to re- cognize simple relations a first acquaint- ance with the syllogism. Suppose the limit of this generalized education to be agreed upon, is there no point at which specializa- tion should begin? Every one allows that there is: but it does not therefore follow that the cause which is commonly recog- nised as demanding specialization or the standard by which it is judged is right. Just as in the earlier years THE ALTERNATIVE LIES BETWEEN TRAINING AND INFORMATION. So in these later stages also, when the life- work is almost begun, when the tools are al- most in the hand, or, at any rate, we know the names of the tools which the man will be called upon to use, we have still to ask— Shall we teach the lad to use as many of these tools as p< -sible, or shall we still con- tinue to train judgment, so that when the time comes he will quickly gain the re- quisite facility in the use of any tool ? I plead for training, specialized training, train- ing of the right kind, but yet not practice. Specially am I interested, as I have said, in the training of medical students. For many years I have taken part in the medical exa- minations, and knowing as I do more than most examiners of the lives of the students -watching, the struggles which they make to prepare t-hemselves-struggles often incred ibly severe and sustained, requiring a self- denial for which they get but little credit- the large percentage of rejections lies on my conscience more heavily than-for my own comfort at any rate it ought to do. But at every meeting for bringing out a class list, the examiners make complain that the stu- dents "do not t-imk." "They cannot ex- press themselves." "They seem to have no powers of observation." Now, although I should soon weary you if I were to attempt to give an account of the education needed t o prepare a man to be a doctor, this illustra- I r tion will serve as well as any other to show how in the preparation for a particular group of professions, for example, agriculture, en- gineering, medicine, in varying degrees, spe- cialization should proceed along certain well- defined lines. For these profes- sions the student needs to learn to observe and to connect like ot»*-i: to argue from phenomena, and not from words or ac- tions. I have collected a body of figures as to the length of time which the final stages of the medical curriculum have occupied men who received their preliminary training in Various (subjects, classics, mathematics, natural science, moral scienee, &c. My facts are not sufficiently numerous for sta- tistics, while they are far too personal for in- dividual publication but certain conclu- sions are easily deduced. One thing which stands out prominently may, perhaps., ysur- prise you until you have traced it to its causes. You cannot teach a Wrangler na- tural science in any form. Of curse, I I make an exception in favour of those who arfi Wranglers despite a natural antipathy to mathematics men of such mental power that they cannot help being Wranglers, just as they would have been obliged to be first- class classics or first-class historians; but the man who is a Wrangler by nature is in- capable of understanding medicine or any other branch of biological science. ONE OR TWO ANECDOTES will perhaps bring home the reason. Oae day a very high wrangler, who was labouring painfully with knife and forceps, asked me as I passed him in the laboratory, "Would you mind telling me, air, where this artery comes from?" I gazed at him in amaze- ment for he was holding in his forceps an artery of the arm, which was already 1-,id bare right to its source in the heart. He could not see it, and he had no formula to help him. If I could have answered, "Let the heart equal x, and the main artery y, then this branch equals xy," he would have recorded the interesting relation in his memory. Another medical student who also had been a high Wrangler asked me one day to tell him where to buy a microscope. "The instrument shop in St Tibb's Row?" I answered. "Where is St Tibb's Row F" I explained. "Would you mind showing me how to get there ?" Knowing the ineptitude of wranglers I consented. After half an hour he came back to me, "I can't find it, sir." So this time I took him to the doer. "Oh this is the instrument shop! Do ycu know I've been through this street twice every day for the last twelve months, but I never saw this shop, and I handn't noticed until you told me that the street is called St. Tibb's Row." My friend and pupil has given up medicine after spending infinite labour on obtaining his diploma, and is now an eminent writer of books. His mathema- tical training had completely eliminated the power of observation. His mind dealt with abstractions—the relations between signs and I formulae—not wth phenomena or material things. Let us allow, then, that mathema- tics are an unsuitable preparation for the ob- serving professions; there no other occupa- tions for which they provide the right kind of training? Any one who looks up the antecedents of H.M. Judges will entertain no doubt as to the suitability of mathematics as a preparation for the profession of law. An Act cf Parliament is 3- concatenation of formulae. Who can interpret it without a knowledge of the Binomial Theorem ? The stoneo ct a succession of contradictory' wit- nesses can be reduced to a result only by adding here, subtracting there, and finally adding up the remainders of the evidence in two columns, and ex- pressing the sum as a vulgar fraction. The lawyer deals not with things and pheno- mena but with signs and formulae, with motives and inferences which he can cnly understand and correlate by reflection, by introspection, by an analysis of his own inner consciousness. Thus we might go through various occupations arranging them in groups according to the kind of preparation which seems the natural training for them, but my paper has already made an undue demand upon your Patience. If I went fur- ther, it would only be to try and render still more cogent by contention that in attempting to adapt education to occupation, regard should be had above all tilings to training, and not to the technical value of the informa- tion acquired. THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF EDUCATION, however, still remains. We have as yet only considered it as giving the power cf ob- taining the means of subsistence, net as en- abling us to live. "The life is more than meat, and the body mere than raiment." It is a queer, contentious, illogical world in which we all fight so hard to collect a vast heap of things which we can neither eat nor drink nor wear, and then spend the rest of our time in mounting guard upon the summit of the pile. It is the way of the world, how- ever, and we must prove cowards in the I fight. Perhaps we neecl not always fight for our own hand. Our valour may be shown at times in protecting a wounded comrade, or sheltering those who are too weak to hold their own. But fight we must. Our weapons must be of the sharpest, our armour most complete. Each man must paint the device on his shield in the brightest and most telling colours whether it be a birch rod or a pestle and mortar, the gryphon that maintains order in the school room cr the mock turtle dove that coos across the counter. This is our sign, cur trade mark, let it stand out prominently but what about the grounding of the shield ? May we not fill it in in sott and restful colours ? Are we to think only of making the mind a fighting machine, and not to enjoy the luxury of using it for purposes of relaxation. Surely this should not be! Ought there not to be the same kind of avarice for intellectual treasures, pride in mental athletics, epicu- rean enjoyment of literary dainties, which supplies a motive for the acquisition of the other good things of life ? If this aim is to be realized we must help to keep down the growing belief that from infancy to manhocd the student should be supplied with useful I information only.