instinct of virility would show itself first in morbid aberrations. On
that I say nothing. I only say this--that I think the present crisis in
the English marriage market is due, not to clubs or the comfort of
bachelor quarters, but to the cumulative effect of nervous
over-excitement.




XV.

_EYE_ VERSUS _EAR_.


It is admitted on all hands by this time, I suppose, that the best way
of learning is by eye, not by ear. Therefore the authorities that
prescribe for us our education among all classes have decided that we
shall learn by ear, not by eye. Which is just what one might expect from
a vested interest.

Of course this superiority of sight over hearing is pre-eminently true
of natural science--that is to say, of nine-tenths among the subjects
worth learning by humanity. The only real way to learn geology, for
example, is not to mug it up in a printed text-book, but to go into the
field with a geologist's hammer. The only real way to learn zoology and
botany is not by reading a volume of natural history, but by collecting,
dissecting, observing, preserving, and comparing specimens. Therefore,
of course, natural science has never been a favourite study in the eyes
of school-masters, who prefer those subjects which can be taught in a
room to a row of boys on a bench, and who care a great deal less than