father who allowed his son, or the state which
allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a
knight?

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and more or less
of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing
something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and
complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for
untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two
players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the
world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of
the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always
fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he
never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are
paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the
strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is
checkmated--without haste, but without remorse."

Huxley wished that this scientific education should begin at an early
period of every child's training. In 1869 he wrote:

"Let every child be instructed in those general views of the
phaenomena of nature for which we have no exact English name. The
nearest approximation to a name for what I mean which we possess
is physical geography; the Germans have a better, 'Erdkunde'
(earth knowledge or geology in its etymological sense), that is
to say, a general knowledge of the earth, and what is on it and
in it and about it. If anyone who has experience of the ways of
young children will call to mind their questions, he will find
that so far as they can be put in any scientific category, they
will come under this head of 'Erdkunde.' The child asks, 'What is
the moon, and why does it shine?' 'What is this water, and where
does it run?' 'What is the wind?' 'What makes these waves in the
sea?' 'Where does this animal live, and what is the use of that
plant?' And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask
foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving
of a young child; nor any bounds to the slow but solid accretion
of knowledge and development o