He compared his own handicraft as an anatomist with the handicrafts of artisans, and declared that the kind of preliminary training he would choose for himself or for his pupils was precisely the training he would provide for them. He did not wish that one who proposed to be a biologist should learn dissection during his school-days; that would come later, and, in the meantime, broader and deeper foundations had to be laid. These were the ordinary subjects of a liberal education: physical training, drawing, and a little music, French and German, the ordinary English subjects, and the elements of physical science. Against such costly schemes of education for the whole population of a nation, many objections have been urged. Of these, perhaps the chief is that the majority of human beings even in the most civilised country are not capable of profiting by or taking an interest in, or certainly of advancing far in, most subjects. Huxley met such objections in a spirit of the widest statesmanship. There were two reasons for making the general education of all what he called a liberal education. The first was that, even in a liberal education such as he advocated, no subject was pursued beyond the broad elementary stages, and that during the early years of life, while the framework and the character were forming, it was of first-rate importance not to stunt either by lack of material. The second great principle was that until any individual had had the opportunity, it was impossible to say whether or no he would profit much or little, and the gain to the whole nation by not missing any of those who were born with unusual natural capacity was more than worth the cost of affording opportunities to all.
"The great mass of mankind have neither the liking, nor the aptitude, for either literary or scientific or artistic pursuits; nor, indeed, for excellence of any sort. Their ambition is to go through life with moderate exertion and a fair share of ease, doing common things in a common way. And a great blessing and comfort it is that the majority of men are of this mind; for the majority of things to be done are common things, and are quite well enough done when commonly done. The great end of life is not knowledge but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organise into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as others are from over-fulness of meat and drink. But a small percentage of the population is born with that most excellent quality, a desire for excellence, or with special aptitude of some sort or another.... Now, the most important object of all educational schemes is to catch these exceptional people, and turn them to account for the good of society. No man can say where they will crop up; like their opposites, the fools and the knaves, they appear sometimes in the palace, and sometimes in the hovel; but the great thing to be aimed at, I was almost going to say, the most important end of all social arrangements, is to keep these glorious sports of Nature from being either corrupted by luxury or starved by poverty, and to put them into the position in which they can do the work for which they are specially fitted.... I weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential Watt or Davy or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at the money."
The beginning and end of the whole matter was that a national system of education was above all things a "capacity-catcher," designed to secure against the loss of the incalculable advantages to be gained by cultivating the best genius born in the land.
