f these firm convictions.
Accordingly, the ideas on education which he put forth more than fifty
years ago have penetrated educational practice very slowly--particularly
in England; but they are now coming to prevail in most civilised
countries, and they will prevail more and more. Through him, the
thoughts on education of Comenius, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, Rousseau,
Pestalozzi, and other noted writers on this neglected subject are at
last winning their way into practice, with the modifications or
adaptations which the immense gains of the human race in knowledge and
power since the nineteenth century opened have shown to be wise.

For teachers and educational administrators it is interesting to observe
the steps by which Spencer's doctrines--and especially his doctrine of
the supreme value of science--have advanced towards acceptance in
practice. In general, the advance has been brought about through the
indirect effects of the enormous industrial, social, and political
changes of the last fifty years. The first practical step was the
introduction of laboratory teaching of one or more of the sciences into
the secondary schools and colleges. Chemistry and physics were the
commonest subjects selected. These two subjects had been taught from
books even earlier; but memorising science out of books is far less
useful as training than memorising grammars and vocabularies. The
characteristic discipline of science can be imparted only through the
laboratory method. The schoolmasters and college faculties who took this
step by no means admitted Spencer's contention that science should be
the universal staple at all stages of child development. On the
contrary, they believed, as most people do to-day, that the mind of the
young child cannot grasp the processes and generalisations of science,
and that science is no more universally fitted to develop mental power
than the classics or mathematics. Indeed, experience during the past
fifty years seems to have proved that fewer minds are naturally inclined
to scientific study than to linguistic or historical study; so that if
some science is to be learnt by everybody, the amount of such study
should be limited to acquiring in one or two sciences knowledge of the
scientific method in general. So much scientific training is indeed
universally desirable; because good training of the senses to observe
accurately is universally desirable, and the collecting, comparing, and
grouping of man