7. It is undoubtedly in the highest degree desirable that all great advances in science should become the common property of all cultivated men. And this can only be done by introducing into the course of a liberal education such studies as unfold and fix in men's minds {170} the fundamental ideas upon which the new-discovered truths rest. The progress made by the ancients in geography, astronomy, and other sciences, led them to assign, wisely and well, a place to arithmetic and geometry among the steps of an ingenuous education. The discoveries of modern times have rendered these steps still more indispensable; for we cannot consider a man as cultivated up to the standard of his times, if he is not only ignorant of, but incapable of comprehending, the greatest achievements of the human intellect. And as innumerable discoveries of all ages have thus secured to Geometry her place as a part of good education, so the great discoveries of Newton make it proper to introduce Elementary Mechanics as a part of the same course. If the education deserve to be called _good_, the pupil will not remain ignorant of those discoveries, the most remarkable extensions of the field of human knowledge which have ever occurred. Yet he cannot by possibility comprehend them, except his mind be previously disciplined by mechanical studies. The period appears now to be arrived when we may venture, or rather when we are bound to endeavour, to include a new class of Fundamental Ideas in the elementary discipline of the human intellect. This is indispensable, if we wish to educe the powers which we know that it possesses, and to enrich it with the wealth which lies within its reach[15\3]. [Note 15\3: The University of Cambridge has, by a recent law, made an examination in Elementary Mechanics requisite for the Degree of B.A.]