12 SEPTEMBER 1863, Page 3

Lord Stanley made a characteristic speech on scientific edu- cation

last Tuesday night, at Liverpool, on the termination of the session of the Liverpool School of Science. He held that cold scientific training rectifies the tendency to partial enthusiasms and fanatieisms which are so fascinating to most minds, and made a remark which shows that Lord Stanley can observe what is foreign to his own nature, that men are too apt to prefer those good causes in which they are "stimulated by a little opposition." In science there is no danger of this temptation, and hence he recommended science to open the eyes and cool the narrow fervours of human prejudice. He thought nature, as distinguished from man, was too little studied in our schools, and he ascribed to this neglect the great amount of wasted effort often spent upon impossible problems and still oftener on problems which, unknown to the author, had been already solved. "In one case the discoverer is looking for that which cannot be found ; in the other he is like a man toiling through a dense, untrodden forest, cutting his way at every step, and unaware that within a few yards of him there is a good made road leading to the place where he wishes to go." It is to industrial science, said Lord Stanley, that we look for machinery to do in future the servile work of life' and spare man for higher pursuits. The labourer needs to have a por- tion of his drudgery taken off his hands,—" to have slaves who shall work for him. Not human slaves—God forbid!— but to summon to his aid those hidden powers of nature which it has pleased our Maker to subject to the control of man's intelligence and will." Lord Stanley always leaves, even on the most hacknied theme, the impression of cold first- hand thought—of a frigid intellect which has formed its own views of men and things.