Education; Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804; Science -- Study and teaching
physical energies of the population may be maintained at a proper
level; in which their moral state may be cared for; in which there may
be some rays of hope and pleasure in their lives; and in which the sole
prospect of a life of labour may not be an old age of penury.
These are the chief suggestions I have to offer to you, though I have
omitted much that I should like to have said, had time permitted. It
may be that some of you feel inclined to look upon them as the Utopian
dreams of a student. If there be such, let me tell you that there are,
to my knowledge, manufacturing towns in this country, not one-tenth the
size, or boasting one-hundredth part of the wealth, of Manchester, in
which I do not say that the programme that I have put before you is
completely carried out, but in which, at any rate, a wise and
intelligent effort had been made to realise it, and in which the main
parts of the programme are in course of being worked out. This is not
the first time that I have had the privilege and pleasure of addressing
a Manchester audience. I have often enough, before now, thrown myself
with entire confidence upon the hard-headed intelligence and the very
soft-hearted kindness of Manchester people, when I have had a difficult
and complicated scientific argument to put before them. If, after the
considerations which I have put before you--and which, pray be it
understood, I by no means claim particularly for myself, for I presume
they must be in the minds of a large number of people who have thought
about this matter--if it be that these ideas commend themselves to your
mature reflection, then I am perfectly certain that my appeal to you to
carry them into practice, with that abundant energy and will which have
led you to take a foremost part in the great social movements of our
country many a time beforehand, will not be made in vain. I therefore
confidently appeal to you to let those impulses once more have full
sway, and not to rest until you have done something better and greater
than has yet been done in this country in the direction in which we are
now going. I heartily thank you for the attention which you have been
kind enough to bestow upon me. The practice of public speaking is one I
must soon think of leaving off, and I count it a special and peculiar
honour to have had the opportunity of speaking to you on this subject
to-day.
* * * * *
THE END OF VOL. III
End of Project Gutenberg's Science and Education, by Thomas H. Huxley
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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