some instruction in them might probably precede all the rest. Then, in its due course, geology would lead up to the rudiments of biology; and by the time the youthful mind was ready to conceive them, it would be brought face to face with the absorbing problems of the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man.

"In short, you would simply substitute a scientific curriculum for the classical and literary curriculum hitherto implied in a 'liberal education'?"

Not at all; we have not yet reached the point at which we can profitably consider the due place and function of classics in a rational scheme of training. We have not yet arrived at the parting of the ways. All that I have hitherto urged is that every boy, whatever course of study or path of life he is ultimately to follow, should be encouraged and assisted to use his eyes, and not to let the fog of unthinking familiarity shut him off from the marvels he daily and nightly sees around him, on earth and in the heavens. He can proceed in science so far as I have indicated without a single numerical calculation or quantitative analysis. "He can become a shallow smatterer, in fact!"

Alas! we must be content in this life to be smatterers in most things, if only we can go a little deeper into one or two. But I do not think that a knowledge in wide outline of the phenomena and processes of nature, accompanied by a habit of noting them with wonder instead of passing them by in dull indifference, can rightly be called a smattering.

Many boys, of course, would find in one or more of these branches of science the main interest of their lives. They would cease to "smatter"; they would concentrate, specialise, and enrol themselves by natural affinity in one or other corps of the great army of searchers into the arcana of nature. But whatever is to be a man's main interest and pursuit, he cannot afford to shut himself up in it until he has a clear general conception of that marvellous concatenation of phenomena in the midst of which his lot is cast. To whichever of the Muses he may ultimately swear allegiance, he must first do homage to those Titan sisters of an elder race, Astronomy and Geology. Geology teaches us the meaning of Time, Astronomy carries us as near as the mind can go to the conception of Eternity.

In Aladdin's Palace, then, I feebly figured

the domain of Science. Still more feebly, perhaps, the Adventures of Sindbad shadowed forth the chequered fortunes of humanity in this, its obscure corner of the universe. In my next chapter I shall try to co-ordinate History with Science as the twin-constituent in a liberal education.

IV

THE ADVENTURES OF SINDBAD

ONCE more I look abroad from my study window, but this time with a different preoccupation. What I saw before-whether with the bodily or the mental eye-was a clot of matter orbed in the turning-lathe of cosmic forces; swinging with headlong velocity round one of an infinite host of incalculably greater orbs; carrying with it an atmosphere of subtle and complex chemistry; swathed about with life-giving oceans; its crust built up and crumbled down by the patient energies of ten thousand ages; and clad as to its surface in a motley robe, woven of myriads of living, multiplying, and dying organisms, some of which, by an ultimate miracle, have broken loose from their roots, and move palpitating through the atmosphere, on wings, or hooves, or feet-or motor-bicycles. Now, as I look

around, I fix my attention on another order of phenomena : those associated with the mental as distinct from the merely vegetative functions of the organisms which, in the absence of auxiliary mechanism, move on two feet. These creatures have somehow developed the power of remembering, grouping, abstracting, recording, communicating their sense-impressions ; of distinguishing between the I and the Not-I; of using tools; of telling stories and singing songs; of forming societies, offensive and defensive, which are themselves elaborate organisms; of killing each other with weapons of far wider range than the tooth and claw of nature; of disputing about the Whence, How, and Whither of life, and adopting theories for which they are willing to persecute or to die. This quaint race of beings at one time considered itself the end and object of all things, and believed that the earth had been sculptured and the heavens spangled for its special behoof and benefit. That now seems improbable; but Man's place in terrestrial nature is nevertheless unique. Even if we had no personal interest in the matter, the vicissitudes through which he has passed might well form the object of a rational curiosity.