with her spirit, and indebted for his best products to her methods. I
believe that the greatest intellectual revolution mankind has yet seen
is now slowly taking place by her agency. She is teaching the world
that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment, and
not authority; she is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence; she
is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral
and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible
aim of an intelligent being.

But of all this your old stereotyped system of education takes no note.
Physical science, its methods, its problems, and its difficulties, will
meet the poorest boy at every turn, and yet we educate him in such a
manner that he shall enter the world as ignorant of the existence of
the methods and facts of science as the day he was born. The modern
world is full of artillery; and we turn out our children to do battle
in it, equipped with the shield and sword of an ancient gladiator.

Posterity will cry shame on us if we do not remedy this deplorable state
of things. Nay, if we live twenty years longer, our own consciences
will cry shame on us.

It is my firm conviction that the only way to remedy it is, to make the
elements of physical science an integral part of primary education. I
have endeavoured to show you how that may be done for that branch of
science which it is my business to pursue; and I can but add, that I
should look upon the day when every schoolmaster throughout this land
was a centre of genuine, however rudimentary, scientific knowledge, as
an epoch in the history of the country.

But let me entreat you to remember my last words. Addressing myself to