that a certain fossil
belonged to the old red sandstone, below which no coal is found.
Numerous attempts have been made to construct electromagnetic engines,
in the hope of superseding steam; but had those who supplied the money
understood the general law of the correlation and equivalence of
forces, they might have had better balances at their bankers. Daily are
men induced to aid in carrying out inventions which a mere tyro in
science could show to be futile. Scarcely a locality but has its history
of fortunes thrown away over some impossible project.

And if already the loss from want of science is so frequent and so
great, still greater and more frequent will it be to those who hereafter
lack science. Just as fast as productive processes become more
scientific, which competition will inevitably make them do; and just as
fast as joint-stock undertakings spread, which they certainly will; so
fast must scientific knowledge grow necessary to every one.

That which our school-courses leave almost entirely out, we thus find to
be that which most nearly concerns the business of life. Our industries
would cease, were it not for the information which men begin to acquire,
as they best may, after their education is said to be finished. And were
it not for this information, from age to age accumulated and spread by
unofficial means, these industries would never have existed. Had there
been no teaching but such as goes on in our public schools, England
would now be what it was in feudal times. That increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena, which has through successive ages enabled us
to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common
labourer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is
scarcely in any degree owed to the appointed means of instructing our
youth. The vital knowledge--that by which we have grown as a nation to
what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge
that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained
agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas.

* * * * *

We come now to the third great division of human activities--a division
for which no preparation whatever is made. If by some strange chance not
a vestige of us descended to the remote future save a pile of our
school-books or some college examination papers, we may imagine how
puzzled an antiquary of the