In addition, primary education endeavours to fit a boy out with a
certain equipment of positive knowledge. He is taught the great laws
of morality; the religion of his sect; so much history and geography as
will tell him where the great countries of the world are, what they are,
and now they have become what they are.
But if I regard it closely, a curious reflection arises. I suppose that,
fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any well-to-do Roman citizen
was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own,
and, perhaps, the Greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and
the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time.
Furthermore, I do not think I err in affirming that, if such a Christian
Roman boy, who had finished his education, could be transplanted into
one of our public schools, and pass through its course of instruction,
he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of thought; amidst all
the new facts he would have to learn, not one would suggest a different
mode of regarding the universe from that current in his own time.
And yet surely there is some great difference between the civilisation
of the fourth century and that of the nineteenth, and still more between
the intellectual habits and tone of thought of that day and this?
And what has made this difference? I answer fearlessly--The prodigious
development of physical science within the last two centuries.