[6] "The idea of education for all classes, the aim of all educators and statesmen of western countries, scarcely entered the minds of the leaders of China under the traditional system of education. With the introduction of the new educational system, however, the problem of universal education suddenly came into prominence. Indeed, it is the stated goal of the new educational policy." (Ping Wen Kuo, The Chinese System of Public Education, p. 149.)
[7] Education in China has been common, for a class, for over four thousand years. The schools were private, but a detailed national system of examinations was provided by the State, and all who expected any state preferment were required to pass these state examinations. The system was based on the old Confucian classics. Under it schools existed in all the chief towns, and the examination system exerted a strong unifying influence on the nation. In 1842 China opened five treaty ports to the ships and commerce of western nations, and from 1842 to 1903 a process of gradual transition from the ancient examination system to modern conditions took place.
[8] "A nation that has preserved its identity by peaceful means for three milleniums; that has made the soil produce subsistence for a multitudinous population during that long period, while Western peoples have worn out their soil in less than that many centuries; that has produced many of the most influential of modern inventions, such as printing, gunpowder, and the compass; that has developed such mechanical ingenuity and commercial ability as are shown in its everyday life, undoubtedly possesses the ability to accomplish results by the use of methods worked out by the Western world. When modern scientific knowledge is added by the Chinese to the skill which they already have in agriculture, in commerce, in industry, in government, and in military affairs, results will be achieved, on the basis of their physical stamina and moral qualities, which will remove the ignorance, the indifference, and the prejudice of the Western world regarding things Chinese." (Monroe, Paul, Editorial introduction to Ping Wen Kuo's The Chinese System of Public Education.)
[9] Though appearing small on the map, Siam is a nation of six millions of people and an area over three and a half times that of the six New England States.
[10] "Through metaphysics first; then through alchemy and chemistry, through physical and astronomical spectroscopy, lastly through radio- activity, science has slowly groped its way to the atom." (Soddy, F., Matter and Energy.)
[11] Adams in England, and Leverrier in France. The planet Uranus had for long been known to be erratic in its movements, and Adams and Leverrier concluded, working from Newton's law for gravitation, that it must be due to the pull of an unknown planet. Both calculated the orbit of this unknown body, Adams sending his calculations to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and Leverrier to the observatory at Berlin. At both observatories the new planet—later named Neptune—was picked up by the telescope at the position indicated.
[12] This theory of "catastrophes" held that at a number of successive epochs, of which the age of Noah was the latest, great revolutions or disasters had taken place on the earth's surface, in which all living things were destroyed. Later the world was restocked, and again destroyed. This explained the successive strata, and the fossils they contained. For this theory Lyell substituted a slow and orderly evolution, covering ages, and completely upset the Mosaic chronology.
[13] For example:—mineralogy, petrography, petrology, crystallography, stratigraphy, and paleontology.
[14] "Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world like a plow into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books, light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides." (White, A. D., The Warfare of Science and Theology, vol. 1, p. 70.)
[15] Natural history as a study goes back to the days of Aristotle, in Greece, but it had always been a study of fixed forms. Darwin destroyed this conception, and vitalized the new subject of biology. From this botany and zoology have been derived, and from these again many other new sciences, such as physiology, morphology, bacteriology, anthropology, cytology, entomology, and all the different agricultural sciences.