His first general point was to deprecate the action of those extremists of both sides who tried to make the education of children a mere battle-ground of religious dogmas.  He then laid down what he conceived to be the lines of most general utility upon which, under the provisions of the Act, the education of children should be conducted.  In the foreground he placed physical training and drill, as of supreme importance to young children, especially in the case of the poor children of large towns.

“All the conditions of the lives of such are unfavourable to their physical well-being.  They are badly lodged, badly housed, badly fed, and live from one year’s end to another in bad air, without a chance of a change.  They have no play-grounds; they amuse themselves with marbles and chuck-farthing, instead of cricket and hare-and-hounds; and if it were not for the wonderful instinct which leads all poor children of tender years to throw themselves under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility.”

This, humanitarianism as it was, was not the mere emotional sentiment of the typical humanitarian; he went on to give the soundest practical reasons for physical development.

“Whatever doubts people may entertain about the efficacy of natural selection, there can be none about artificial selection; and the breeder who should attempt to make, or keep up, a fine stock of pigs, or sheep, under the conditions to which the children of the poor are exposed, would be the laughing stock even of the bucolic mind.  Parliament has already done something in this direction by declining to be an accomplice in the asphyxiation of school children.  It refuses to make any grant to a school in which the cubical contents of the school-room are inadequate to allow of proper respiration.”

He wished to see physical training put on the same system.

The second great point upon which he laid stress was the necessity of providing training in domestic economy, cookery, and other household accomplishments, for poor girls.  These demands of Huxley seem simple and obvious, now that by his efforts and the efforts of others they have been accomplished, but in England, even thirty years ago, it required more than an ordinary prevision and boldness to insist upon them.

Huxley passed next to the burning question of the time.  He treated it in the broadest and least sectarian spirit.

“The boys and girls for whose education the School Boards have to provide, have not merely to discharge domestic duties, but each of them is a member of a social and political organisation of great complexity, and has, in future life, to fit himself into that organisation, or be crushed by it.  To this end it is surely needful, not only that they should be made acquainted with the elementary laws of conduct, but that their affections should be trained, so as to