men in Government offices and public schools, is one of the most effectual that could be devised for retarding the progress of the nation in all those departments which depend upon science. If scientific men are to be legislated for and directed, justice requires that it should be by men possessed of an adequate amount of scientific knowledge.

To partly remedy the unsatisfactory state of science in this country, we require a State Minister of Science possessed of scientific knowledge and good administrative ability; a scientific council, to advise the Government in all important matters relating to science; and a State laboratory for original scientific research.

The funds for a State laboratory already exist; the sum of nearly 600,0001. has accumulated in the form of fees received by Government for the granting of patents for inventions; and, as the discoveries made by scientific men form the materials by means of which those inventions were made, the money thus accumulated may be justly claimed by scientific discoverers as a source from which their labours should be remunerated by the State.

As long as scientific men continue, at their own expense, to do the work which ought to be paid for by the State, so long will the governing classes of this country, impelled by the selfishness which pervades them in common with all mankind, and unenlightened by knowledge of science, neglect that duty, and reap the chief benefits of such labours.

The time has arrived when this great national evil should be made publicly known and put an end to; and our men of science should present a memorial to our Government, claiming, as a matter of justice, necessary for the nation's welfare, that the accumulated fees from patents should be applied to the establishment of a scientific department of the State, the erection of State laboratories, and the payment of discoverers for the national work of research.

Should our governments continue to neglect these just claims and disregard the evidence collected by the "Royal Commission for the Advancement of Science," the decline of original scientific research, which has already commenced, will continue. The probable results of this will be, inventions will become scarce; new trades will not be developed; improvements in agriculture, arts, manufactures, means of defence, and many other important matters will decline; the value of houses and land will diminish, and our commerce will pass into the hands of more far-sighted nations.

On Scientific Education in Middle-Class Schools. By C. SPENCE BATES, F.R.S.

O one can contemplate the rapid progress that the science

they

in existence, and not feel it to be a matter of regret that the results of a similar cultivation had been so long withheld. The eagerness

and persevering success with which they are attended is evidence of the large amount of industry and ability that have been wasted to the country for the want of such an institution as is represented in these schools. There is not a trade or an occupation that can add to the wealth and industry of the nation that will not be improved in character and degree by having the cultivated intelligence of those who have passed through the necessary training that these schools require brought to bear upon it. I am fully aware that these schools are at present on their trial; that they are as yet rather a congregation of science classes than schools; that they are in an incipient and undeveloped condition. The Government have, however, made a good beginning-they recognise the study of science as a national advantage rather than a local benefit. It is impossible to limit the good that one man may do. James Watt, George Stephenson, and the discoverer of the electric telegraph belong to this country, and I hope and believe there are as many as good yet to come, whose character these schools may assist in developing. I say that the Government have done well in recognising the great advantage to the nation that must accrue from an extended scientific education of the people. But in this object it never was intended that the assistance of the Government should prevent the locality from aiding in the great and wise movement. If it be an advantage to the nation at large, it must be doubly so to the locality in which a successful school is established. There the individual is benefited, the family is benefited, the circle in which he moves is benefited, and the whole neighbourhood is benefited. But in the classes at present organized the benefit is circumscribed compared to the good work that they might be made to do.

The present aim appears to have little beyond educating the pupils so as to enable them successfully to follow out the trade or calling in which they may gain their future livelihood with the greatest benefit to their fellow-citizens. No doubt that this is a great national object, and one that is likely to develop much and lasting benefit. In doing as much as this the Government have done all that can be expected of them; nay, for them to do more is probably to overstep the bounds of a wise Government, whose duty is only to give the impulse and aid where it is absolutely necessary. In provincial towns, far from academical and scientific centres, the want of scientific instruction is much felt in middle-class education. The ranks of the professions and the higher walks of trade are recruited from boys who have but a limited power of selection in the pursuit of their education. They have generally, also, from their positions in life, but few years in which to train the intellect.

It is, therefore, most desirable that means should be employed which are likely to produce the best results within a limited period. When we hear that even the low standard of excellence demanded from lads previous to the commencement of any professional study is attained with about 75 per cent. of failures, and of those who satisfy these examiners few succeed without the undergoing of a system of cramming that augurs not well for their future career, when we

observe this, I think that we are bound to come to the conclusion that youths who fill the ranks of middle-class life do not receive that degree of mental training during their youth that is best adapted to their position in life. This must arise from a defect, either in the teacher or in the system. That it is not in the former, I think may be demonstrated as a rule. Unqualified teachers are, no doubt, common enough, but to counterbalance this there are able teachers and successful schools in almost every large town in England. But the fault lies, I think, in the system. A boy comes from an elementary school to one of the grammar schools of the neighbourhood in which he lives. The new master takes for granted that he can read, write, spell, and do his multiplication table, &c., sets him at work in Latin, Greek, Euclid, French, and may be German, and drawing from copies. The lad, at each of these, spends weekly from two to twelve hours, according to the supposed importance of the subject. This he does for nine months in the year for an average, say of three to four years. The consequence is, that youths generally leave school with a little knowledge in numerous subjects, but without that training of the mind which perseverance in any one line of thought, persistently carried to its extreme limits, must produce.

I have taken for granted in my statement that the pupils are attentive and tolerably industrious, that every effort is brought to bear upon the youthful mind to bring out the best results. It therefore remains that, with the strongest desire to succeed on the part of the teacher and the pupil, experience shows us that the mental training is of the poorest. And it is only because the average is so low that the fact is not more perceptible. If, as I here affirm, the fault is not with the teacher nor with the pupil, it follows that it must be in the system. It is not just to lay the blame on the parents, who it is only right to assume are doing their best for their children, and have only limited means at their command. Limited means is another expression for a short period of time for the education. But the plan of training the mind is generally the same, whether the lad works for an academical career, which means a ten or twelve years' course of study, or quits the school for an office desk, after a mental training of, perhaps, three years' duration.

We may with safety assume that there is no nobler mental training than a classical or mathematical education, when carried to its extreme limit. But, on the other hand, there can scarcely be a worse education than the pursuit of these same studies when arrested on the threshold of their cultivation. Education is not so much intended to give knowledge as it is to train the mind to obtain it; and I contend that the present system of education as carried out in our middle-class schools is not adapted as the best system of mental training for those lads whose period of education is limited in time.

While I admit that no education surpasses that of either the classics or mathematics, where time will admit of their study, I contend that the cultivation of science, when pursued as a system of education, will rival either of them. That it does its work more rapidly, and is better adapted to the average capacity, is, I think, very

strongly to be presumed. There is not a profession or calling in this working world that does not demand the result of science as part of its study. This, however, in an educational point of view, is the lowest ground on which to base its claim as a system of mental training. By the term science is meant a close investigation of facts and phenomena absolutely as they exist. This teaches exactness in observation not to be surpassed by any other system of education; and this closeness of observation demands a clearness of expression that more than anything else demonstrates clearness of thought. I think it is to this chiefly is due the great desire of defining the true meaning of words and the coining of others, for science cannot tolerate that the same word should express two meanings. If the cultivation of science rivals that of the older schools as a system of education, it certainly leaves its mark more permanently and effectually in a shorter period of time. This is to be attributed, I think, to the fact that it bears a closer affinity with the tangible world around it, and from its progressive condition corresponds more readily to the probability of human events.

I would therefore urge that a system of scientific training should be given, at all events, to supplement the present curriculum of edu cation in our middle-class schools. And this should be made more imperative on those students whose educational training ceases with their attendance at the school. On pursuing any avocation in life it will be found that a vitality will be given to the studies that have been pursued in accordance with the bearing they will have upon the student's future career, and instead of the old school books being thrown aside, they will repeatedly have to be referred to, as the knowledge they contain will be found to lead up to that pursued in the study of the professional career. As science, moreover, is varied in its walks, it has the power of educating the peculiar bent of the student, and parents and tutors would earlier be able to train the mind in the direction of its future line of thought, and adapt it to the future professional career. But to those who pursue science to the end, raising on it a superstructure of classic and mathematical training, I doubt if a higher or nobler education can be obtained even in our ancient seats of learning, that will train men for all the higher duties of life.

In this great element our provincial middle-class schools are deficient. They train for the universities, or leave the education incomplete; and when the student enters on his calling he commences one to which his previous training is but a feeble introduction. The zeal with which the cultivation of scientific studies and the success which has attended the science schools, especially in this locality, are strongly suggestive that a similar training would be eagerly sought after among middle-class students, to whom scientific knowledge is even more imperative than it is to the mechanic and industrial artisan. Encouragement, moreover, may be given to those studies by endowing them with local scholarships. These at present are seldom given except to those who carry on their studies at one of the universities. There appears to me good reason to presume that

many a lad in his early career would be much encouraged by such a stimulus to scientific study. This stimulus might readily be available out of the education legacies that the Endowed Schools Commission are endeavouring satisfactorily to distribute. Whether this

encouragement be given or not, it cannot be doubted but that the cultivation of science in middle-class schools will bring a power to bear upon that portion of our youth that, according to their position, are now most at disadvantage. I mean the middle-class student; who has but a limited period for mental training.

Mr. W. CAVE THOMAS read a paper on "The Proportionate or Symmetrical System of Education."* He said, there were two radical misconceptions in our present system of education, namely, that intellectual bias should be fostered, and that quantity and variety of knowledge are preferable to quality—a regulated and symmetrical cultivation of the man. It is therefore important, in the true interests of the education of the future, that the superiority of the pro portionate or symmetrical system should be demonstrated. This system is based on the two following general positions.

1. Beings in which the greatest number of faculties are concentrated in their mean or moderate degree of development manifest the largest general power.

2. Beings in which any special faculty or group of faculties are inordinately excessively developed, exhibit special aptitudes, but are deficient in general power. Their specialization increasing, as the excentration or disproportion constituting their individuation or characteristic increases.

The regal manhood, therefore, must be that manhood neither in excess nor defect of anything essentially human. Disproportionate development in any one particular would destroy the perfect symmetry, and by so much would the individual so disproportioned be less man. Now the cultivation of bias or special intellectual or physical idiosyncrasies, inevitably tends to foster and increase what is evidently a bias, predominance, or disproportion in the nature, and therefore still further to injure the manhood; and not only is the disproportionate development of any formation or faculty in the man himself detrimental to human nature, but the modern tendency to "cramming," to meet the absurd notion that the excellence of an education is in proportion to quantity and variety of knowledge obtained. The leading principles of this doctrine, applicable to education, may be here stated.

1. That all wrong, imperfection, disproportion are aberrations. from mean or average conditions. The mean, therefore, is the measure of rectitude in all things of the proportioned, the symmetrical, or of the good, the perfect, and the beautiful.

"The Proportionate or Symmetrical System of Education" forms a chapter in a forthcoming work on the "Central Science or Principia of Wisdom."