As regards the higher education, he was a strong advocate for science and modern languages, though without wishing to drop the classics.
Some years ago, for an article on higher education, I consulted a good many of the highest authorities on the number of hours per week which, in their judgment, should be given to the principal subjects. Huxley, amongst others, kindly gave me his views. He suggested ten hours for ancient languages and literature, ten for modern languages and literature, eight for arithmetic and mathematics, eight for science, two for geography and two for religious instruction.
For my own part I am firmly convinced that the amount of time devoted to classics has entirely failed in its object. The mind is like the body—it requires change. Mutton is excellent food; but mutton for breakfast, mutton for lunch, and mutton for dinner would soon make any one hate the sight of mutton, and so, Latin grammar before breakfast, Latin grammar before lunch, and Latin grammar before dinner is enough to make almost any one hate the sight of a classical author. Moreover, the classics, though an important part, are not the whole of education, and a classical scholar, however profound, if he knows no science, is but a half-educated man after all.
In fact, Huxley was no opponent of a classical education in the proper sense of the term, but he did protest against it in the sense in which it is usually employed, namely, as an education from which science is excluded, or represented only by a few random lectures.
He considered that specialization should not begin till sixteen or seventeen. At present we begin in our Public School system to specialize at the very beginning, and to devote an overwhelming time to Latin and Greek, which, after all, the boys are not taught to speak. Huxley advocated the system adopted by the founders of the University of London, and maintained to the present day that no one should be given a degree who did not show some acquaintance with science and with at least one modern language.
"As for the so-called 'conflict of studies'" he exclaims, "one might as well inquire which of the terms of a Eule of Three sum one ought to know in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity, and divided by your circumstances, gives you the fourth term in the proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy" ('Life of Professor Huxley,' p. 406).
"That man," he said, "I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge
