and that the science which it is
the highest power to possess, it is also the best exercise to acquire.

And if this be so, the question as to what should be the materiel of
education, becomes singularly simplified. It might be matter of dispute
what processes have the greatest effect in developing the intellect; but
it can hardly be disputed what facts it is most advisable that a man
entering into life should accurately know.

I believe, in brief, that he ought to know three things:

First. Where he is.
Secondly. Where he is going.
Thirdly. What he had best do, under those circumstances.

First. Where he is.--That is to say, what sort of a world he has got
into; how large it is; what kind of creatures live in it, and how; what
it is made of, and what may be made of it.

Secondly. Where he is going.--That is to say, what chances or reports
there are of any other world besides this; what seems to be the nature
of that other world; and whether, for information respecting it, he had
better consult the Bible, Koran, or Council of Trent.

Thirdly. What he had best do under those circumstances.--That is to say,
what kind of faculties he possesses; what are the present state and
wants of mankind; what is his place in society; and what are the
readiest means in his power of attaining happiness and diffusing it. The
man who knows these things, and who has had his will so subdued in the
learning them, that he is ready to do what he knows he ought, I should
call educated; and the man who knows them not,--uneducated, though he
could talk all the tongues of Babel.

Our present European system of so-called education ignores, or despises,
not one, nor the other, but all the three, of these great branches of
human knowledge.

First: It despises Natural History.--Until within the last year or two,
the instruction in the physical sciences given at Oxford consisted of a
course of twelve or fourteen lectures on the Elements of Mechanics or
Pneumatics, and permission to ride out to Shotover with the Professor of
Geology. I do not know the specialties of the system pursued in the
academies of the Continent; but their practical result is, that unless a
man's natural instincts urge him to the pursuit of the physical sciences
too strongly to be resisted, he enters into life utterly ignorant of
them. I cannot, within my present limits, even so much as count the
various directions in which this ignorance does evil. But the m