Further, we need what, for want of a better name,
I must call Physical Geography. What I mean is
that which the Germans call “Erdkunde.”
It is a description of the earth, of its place and
relation to other bodies; of its general structure,
and of its great features—winds, tides,
mountains, plains: of the chief forms of the
vegetable and animal worlds, of the varieties of man.
It is the peg upon which the greatest quantity of
useful and entertaining scientific information can
be suspended.
Literature is not upon the College programme; but
I hope some day to see it there. For literature
is the greatest of all sources of refined pleasure,
and one of the great uses of a liberal education is
to enable us to enjoy that pleasure. There is
scope enough for the purposes of liberal education
in the study of the rich treasures of our own language
alone. All that is needed is direction, and the
cultivation of a refined taste by attention to sound
criticism. But there is no reason why French
and German should not be mastered sufficiently to read
what is worth reading in those languages with pleasure
and with profit.
And finally, by and by, we must have History; treated
not as a succession of battles and dynasties; not
as a series of biographies; not as evidence that Providence
has always been on the side of either Whigs or Tories;
but as the development of man in times past, and in
other conditions than our own.
But, as it is one of the principles of our College
to be self-supporting, the public must lead, and we
must follow, in these matters. If my hearers
take to heart what I have said about liberal education,
they will desire these things, and I doubt not we shall
be able to supply them. But we must wait till
the demand is made.
* * * *
*
Footnotes:
[1] For a justification of what is here said about
these schools, see that valuable book, Essays on
a Liberal Education, passim.
V
SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
[1869]
[Mr. Thackeray, talking of after-dinner
speeches, has lamented that “one never can
recollect the fine things one thought of in the cab,”
in going to the place of entertainment. I am not
aware that there are any “fine things”
in the following pages, but such as there are
stand to a speech which really did get itself spoken,
at the hospitable table of the Liverpool Philomathic
Society, more or less in the position of what
“one thought of in the cab.”]
The introduction of scientific training into the general
education of the country is a topic upon which I could
not have spoken, without some more or less apologetic
introduction, a few years ago. But upon this,
as upon other matters, public opinion has of late undergone
a rapid modification. Committees of both Houses
of the Legislature have agreed that something must
