ability to execute high moral purposes depends
largely upon a ready, practical insight into natural conditions. We
are not thinking of the bread-and-butter phase of life and of the aid
afforded by the sciences in making a living, but of the all-round,
practical utility of natural science as a necessary supplement to moral
training.

One of the best tests of a system of education is the preparation it
gives for life in a liberal sense. When a child, leaving school
behind, develops into a citizen, what tests are applied to him? The
questions submitted to his judgment in his relations to the family and
to society call for a quick and varied knowledge of men, insight into
character, and for a large amount of practical information of natural
science. He is asked to vote intelligently on social, political,
sanitary, and economic questions; to judge of men's motives, opinions,
and character; to vote upon or perhaps to direct the management of
poor-houses, asylums, and penitentiaries; in towns to decide questions
of drainage, police, water supply, public health, and school
administration; to make contracts for public buildings, and bridges; to
grant licenses and franchises; to serve on juries or as representatives
of the people. These are not professional matters alone; they are the
common duties of all citizens of a sound mind. These things each
person should know how to judge, whether he be a blacksmith, a
merchant, or a house keeper. In all such matters he must be not only a
judge of others but an actor under the guidance of right motives and
information. Again, in the bringing up of children, in the domestic
arrangements of every home and in a proper care for the minds and
bodies of both parents and children, a multitude of practical problems
from each of the great fields of real knowledge must be met and solved.

A medical missionary illustrates this combination of historical and
natural science elements. His life purpose is drawn from history, from
the life of Christ, and from the traditional incentives of the church.
The means by which he is to make himself practically felt are obtained
from his study of medicine and from the sciences upon which it depends.
These elements form the basis of his influence. This illustration
however savors of professional rather than of general education, and we
are concerned only with the latter. But the education of every child
is analogous to that of the medical missionary i