Such is the actual aristocrat, as we now behold him. Thus, living his
own barbarous life in the midst of a civilised community of workers and
artists and thinkers and craftsmen, with whom he seldom mingles, and
with whom he has nothing in common, this chartered relic of worse days
preserves from first to last many painful traits of the low moral and
social ideas of his ancestors, from which he has never varied. He
represents most of all, in the modern world, the surviving savage. His
love of gewgaws, of titles, of uniform, of dress, of feathers, of
decorations, of Highland kilts, and stars and garters, is but one
external symbol of his lower grade of mental and moral status. All over
Europe, the truly civilised classes have gone on progressing by the
practice of peaceful arts from generation to generation; but the
aristocrat has stood still at the same half-savage level, a hunter and
fighter, an orgiastic roysterer, a killer of wild boars and wearer of
absurd mediaeval costumes, too childish for the civilised and cultivated
commoner.
Government by aristocrats is thus government by the mentally and morally
inferior. And yet--a Bill for giving at last some scant measure of
self-government to persecuted Ireland has to run the gauntlet, in our
nineteenth-century England, of an irresponsible House of hereditary
barbarians!
III.
_SCIENCE IN EDUCATION._
I mean what I say: science in education, not education in science.
It is the last of these that all the scientific men of England have so
long been fighting for. And a very good thing it is in its way, and I
hope they may get as much as they want of it. But compared to the
importance of science in education, education in science is a matter of
very small national moment.
The difference between the two is by no means a case of tweedledum and
tweedledee. Education in science means the systematic teaching of
science so as to train up boys to be scientific men. Now scientific men
are exceedingly useful members of a community; and so are engineers, and
bakers, and blacksmiths, and artists, and chimney-sweeps. But we can't
all be bakers, and we can't all be painters in water-colours. There is a
dim West Country legend to the effect that the inhabitants of the Scilly
Isles eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another's
washing. As a matter of practical political economy, such a source of
income is worse than precarious--it's frankly impossible. "It takes all
sorts to make a world." A community entirely composed of scientific men
would fail to feed itself, clothe itself, house itself, and keep itself
supplied with amusing light literature. In one word, education in
science produces specialists; and specialists, though most useful and
valuable persons in their proper place, are no more the staple of a
civilised community than engine-drivers or ballet-dancers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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