356 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Choose your master carefully — this is indeed good advice. 

 But this implies, of course, that those who have to choose 

 know how — that they have some standard before them. 

 Have they ? Results seem to show that they rarely have. 

 In this matter, as in many others I believe, the City and 

 Guilds of London Institute has set a good example by 

 selecting men known to be capable of doing research work, 

 and a large amount of research work has been done in 

 its Colleges. I am not aware that, excepting in the case 

 of the Principal of this Polytechnic, capacity to undertake 

 research work has been regarded as a qualification ; on the 

 contrary, for I know that when it was urged at one of them 

 that a particular candidate had exceptional qualifications of 

 this kind, the answer was : We want a man to teach, not to 

 do research. But the work of true education is pure 

 research ; really good teachers are engaged in nothing else, 

 being constantly occupied in studying their pupils' idiosyn- 

 crasies and in devising suitable methods of instruction. 

 The " researcher " is the equivalent of the artist ; the 

 teacher who cannot engage in research is the equivalent 

 of the inartistic copyist. No subject is at a standstill in 

 these days — all progress involves research, although not 

 always original research. The young child even is con- 

 stantly engaged in research, and the habit is only gradually 

 lost at school under our highly developed modern soul-killing 

 system of perpetual lesson-learning, itself largely devised to 

 satisfy a system of payment on results. 



Let us hope, therefore, that every board of Governors 

 will soon learn to appreciate the national importance of re- 

 search, and will require evidence from every candidate for 

 a teacher's post of ability in this respect — when such is the 

 case, the research spirit will prevail also amongst students 

 generally. 



A most desirable example has been set in this direction 

 by what, I suppose, may fairly be termed the least pre- 

 tentious of the London Polytechnics — that in the Borough 

 Road — which with the assistance of the Leathersellers' 

 Company has just opened a branch tanning school at 

 Llarolds Institute, Bermondsey, and with unblushing 



