their while. Nor would I fail to include, in the course of study I am sketching, translations of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern world. It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, the next best thing we can do is to read as good a translation of it as we have recently been furnished with in prose. You won't get all you would get from the original, but you may get a great deal; and to refuse to know this great deal because you cannot get all, seems to be as sensible as for a hungry man to refuse bread because he cannot get partridge. Finally, I would add instruction in either music or painting, or, if the child should be so unhappy, as sometimes happens, as to have no faculty for either of those, and no possibility of doing anything in any artistic sense with them, then I would see what could be done with literature alone; but I would provide, in the fullest sense, for the development of the aesthetic side of the mind. In my judgment, those are all the essentials of education for an English child. With that outfit, such as it might be made in the time given to education which is within the reach of nine-tenths of the population-with that outfit, an Englishman within the limits of English life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions, to fill the highest offices of the State, and to become distinguished in practical pursuits, in science, or in art. For, if he have the opportunity to learn all those things, and have his mind disciplined in the various directions the teaching of those topics would have necessitated, then, assuredly, he will be able to pick up on his road through life, all the rest of the intellectual baggage he wants.

If the educational time at our disposition were sufficient there are one or two things I would add to those I have just now called the essentials; and perhaps you will be surprised to hear, though I hope you will not, that I should add, not more science, but one, or if possible, two languages. The knowledge of some other language than one's own is, in fact, of singular intellectual value. Many of the faults and mistakes of the ancient philosophers are traceable to the fact that they knew no language but their own, and were often led into confusing the symbol with the thought which it embodied. I think it is Locke who says that one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from questions about words; and one of the safest ways of delivering yourself from the bondage of words is, to know how ideas look in words to which you are not accustomed. That is one reason for the study of language; another reason is, that it opens new fields in art and in science. Another is the practical value of such knowledge; and yet another is this, that if your languages are properly chosen, from the time of learning the additional languages you will know your own language better than ever you did. So, I say, if the time given to education permits, add Latin and German. Latin, because it is the key to nearly one-half of English and to all the Romance languages; and German, because it is the key to almost all the remainder of English, and helps you to understand a race from whom most of us have sprung, and who have a character and a literature of a fateful force in the history of the world, such as probably has been allotted to those of no other people, except the Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond

these, the essential and the eminently desirable elements of all education, let each man take up his special linethe historian devote himself to his history, the man of science to his science, the man of letters to his culture of that kind, and the artist to his special pursuit.

Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than this: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit; let "sic cogitavi" be the epilogue to what I have ventured to address to you to-night.

APPRECIATIONS

I

The supremacy of truth, the reality of things, the cultivation of the senses, the need for realistic education and understanding of the physical universe in the midst of which man is set, the folly of yielding to mere glamour, and the sin of sophisticating what we can perceive of truth by hope of reward or dread of consequence,—all this he strenuously fought for; and surely we may say that on the whole he won. No recognized branch of natural knowledge is now excluded from the contemplation by reasonable men, nor is stringent inquiry cursed or dreaded, even by those to whose general purview it appeared at one time to be alien. The universe is recognized as one; and loyal allegiance must be accorded to every proven fact. -SIR OLIVER LODGE

II

I know of no writing which by its mere form, even apart from the supreme interest of the matters with which it mostly deals, gives me so much pleasure as that of the author of these essays. In his case, more than that of his contemporaries, it is strictly true that the style is