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60
The Romanes Lecture 1905

pleasant custom of converting the meal into a social function; we are thus tempted into excess. Only long and extensive experiment can provide us with definite and conclusive information on this matter, which is far more important than, at first sight, it seems to be. And similarly with regard to the admittedly serious question of alcohol—only very extensive and authoritative experiment will suffice to show mankind whether it is a wise and healthy thing to take it in small quantities, the exact limits of which must be stated, or to reject it altogether.


NOTE 10 (p. 44).

It is, perhaps, needful to point out that what is aimed at is that the education of all the youth of the country, both of pass-men and of class-men, of girls as well as of boys, of the rich as well as of the poor, should be primarily directed to imparting an acquaintance with what we already possess in respect of knowledge of Nature, and the training of the pupil so as to enable him or her (a) to make use of that knowledge, and (b) to take part in gaining new knowledge of Nature, at this moment needed but non-existent. This does not involve the complete exclusion of other subjects of instruction, to which about one-third of the time and effort of school and college life might be devoted.


NOTE 11 (p. 52).

The practical steps which would correspond to the views enunciated in this discourse are two. First, the formation of an educational association to establish one or more schools and colleges in which nature-knowledge and training in nature-searching should be the chief matters to which attention would be given, whilst reasonable methods would also be employed for implanting in the minds of the students a love and understanding of literature and other forms of art. Those who desired such an education for their children would support these schools and colleges, just as in the days of Anglican exclusiveness the Nonconformists and