The Catholic priest is trained to know his business, and do it effectually.  The professors of the college in question, learned, zealous, and determined, men, permitted me to speak frankly with them.  We talked like outposts of opposed armies during a truce—­as friendly enemies; and when I ventured to point out the difficulties their students would have to encounter from scientific thought, they replied:  “Our Church has lasted many ages, and has passed safely through many storms.  The present is but a new gust of the old tempest, and we do not turn out our young men less fitted to weather it, than they have been, in former times, to cope with the difficulties of those times.  The heresies of the day are explained to them by their professors of philosophy and science, and they are taught how those heresies are to be met.”

I heartily respect an organization which faces its enemies in this way; and I wish that all ecclesiastical organizations were in as effective a condition.  I think it would be better, not only for them, but for us.  The army of liberal thought is, at present, in very loose order; and many a spirited free-thinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent nonsense.  We should he the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the “Analogy,” who, if he were alive, would make short work of much of the current a priori “infidelity.”

I hope you will consider that the arguments I have now stated, even if there were no better ones, constitute a sufficient apology for urging the introduction of science into schools.  The next question to which I have to address myself is, What sciences ought to be thus taught?  And this is one of the most important of questions, because my side (I am afraid I am a terribly candid friend) sometimes spoils its cause by going in for too much.  There are other forms of culture beside physical science; and I should be profoundly sorry to see the fact forgotten, or even to observe a tendency to starve, or cripple, literary, or aesthetic, culture for the sake of science.  Such a narrow view of the nature of education has nothing to do with my firm conviction that a complete and thorough scientific culture ought to be introduced into all schools.  By this, however, I do not mean that every schoolboy should be taught everything in science.  That would be a very absurd thing to conceive, and a very mischievous thing to attempt.  What I mean is, that no boy nor girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the general character of science, and without having been disciplined, more or less, in the methods of all sciences; so that, when turned into the world to make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific problems, not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by being able at once to solve it; but by being familiar with the general current of scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of science in the proper way, when they have acquainted themselves with the conditions of the special problem.