Looking at these facts, I might perhaps spare myself the trouble of
giving any reasons for the introduction of physical science into
elementary education; yet I cannot but think that it may be well, if I
place before you some considerations which, perhaps, have hardly
received full attention.

At other times, and in other places, I have endeavoured to state the
higher and more abstract arguments, by which the study of physical
science may be shown to be indispensable to the complete training of the
human mind; but I do not wish it to be supposed that, because I happen
to be devoted to more or less abstract and "unpractical" pursuits, I am
insensible to the weight which ought to be attached to that which has
been said to be the English conception of Paradise--"namely, getting
on." I look upon it, that "getting on" is a very important matter
indeed. I do not mean merely for the sake of the coarse and tangible
results of success, but because humanity is so constituted that a vast
number of us would never be impelled to those stretches of exertion
which make us wiser and more capable men, if it were not for the
absolute necessity of putting on our faculties all the strain they will
bear, for the purpose of "getting on" in the most practical sense.

Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a means of getting
on, is indubitable. There are hardly any of our trades, except the
merely huckstering ones, in which some knowledge of science may not be
directly profitable to the pursuer of that occupation. As industry
attains higher stages of its development, as its processes become more
complicated and refined, and competition more keen, the sciences are
dragged in, one by one, to take their share in the fray; and he who can
best avail himself of their help is the man who will come out uppermost