PREFACE.

DE QUINCEY, in the Preface to one of his works, expresses the difficulty of framing suitable titles for books; the late Charles Dickens expressed a similar opinion. If such artists as these in words felt a difficulty, one less skilled in the choice of them may well be excused if the title he has given to his book does not fully indicate all the separate portions of it.

In

The difficulty of framing a suitable title for the work was due to the subject on which it treats. Education, of all the many-sided subjects, is the one that has the greatest number of sides. discussing Scientific and Technical Education, the Author felt it impossible to avoid referring to the oldest branches of higher education, classics, and mathematics. This was rendered necessary for two reasons; the first being that they are the subjects which have been longest taught in secondary schools and universities. The Author conceived that if he could show and prove that eminent authorities on these subjects considered that the modes of teaching them admitted of improvement, which he thinks he has done, it might very fairly

be supposed that the teaching of the comparatively newer branches of learning, as those of the Inductive Sciences, might not be perfect. He has also shown, he thinks, from the opinions of the eminent authorities he has quoted, that some of the Inductive Sciences are very imperfectly taught; but he has had to depend upon his own opinion alone for the imperfect way he believes. Chemistry is taught. He must therefore leave it decide whether he has, like

for Public opinion to

the distinguished authorities on the other subjects, made out a case.

For this reason, if for no other, he has devoted one Lecture to the operations of the mind, so that those who are not conversant with Chemistry can test which of the two methods— the one he condemns, or the one he proposes-for teaching that science is most in harmony with the laws of thought.

The second reason which induced him to refer to classics and mathematics was to show that the mind is only trained by the study of those subjects in deductive reasoning, and is, therefore, imperfectly trained when education is confined to them; and of the two modes of reasoning, deductive and inductive, the latter, it has been shown in the book, is the more important, even in the ordinary affairs of life.

The first two Lectures, in a less extended form, were given to his then students; this was the

reason why the book came to be framed in the form of Lectures. It only remains for the Author to add that he trusts his work will assist in arresting the competitive examination system, at least in the Science Schools carried on by the Department of Science and Art, and by the City Guilds ; a system which, with the exception of England, only retrograde nations like China adopt; and that it will aid in causing us to follow in our educational systems the examples set by enlightened nations like Germany.

ROBERT GALLOWAY.

DUBLIN, April, 1881.