i 9 2 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



istry or natural philosophy is preferable to the pursuit in detail 

 of some particular department in science." 



With the last recommendation he professed hearty agree- 

 ment but it is surprising that he took occasion to make an 

 attack on the "heuristic" method, which, he stated, "has been 

 absurdly pressed even to the detriment of progress. There 

 can scarcely be anything more dreary than a forced heuristic 

 lesson by a teacher who has neither inspiration nor sympathy. 

 For at school the first object of science teaching should be to 

 evoke interest, not to impart the facts or data of science, still 

 less to systematise their rediscovery. The fossilisation of 

 science teaching is indeed the thing most to be feared." Prof. 

 Thompson must either be misrepresenting wilfully what he 

 knows of the system or he has sadly misunderstood its aims 

 and methods. There is emphatically no more certain way of 

 arousing interest, nothing which appeals so vividly to the 

 imagination, nothing more logical in its development, nothing 

 less likely to lead to over-systematisation, than the method 

 of inquiry. It is legitimate to ask where and how the Professor 

 obtained the information on which he bases his criticism. 

 Surely a teacher who lacks inspiration and is out of sympathy 

 with the subject he teaches or with the methods recommended 

 for its development would make any lesson dreary ! Either 

 Prof. Thompson was relying on hearsay evidence and untrust- 

 worthy witnesses or he has been singularly unfortunate in 

 the type of pupil with whom he has been brought in contact, 

 for he admits that a bad teacher could make " even electricity 

 as dull and distasteful a subject as the conjugation of irregular 

 verbs." Certain it is that there are teachers who pretend to 

 teach on heuristic lines but who are ignorant of the first under- 

 lying principles, who are not aware that it is not necessarily 

 an evidence of disorder that a succession of "wrong" impres- 

 sions be allowed to register themselves on the brain and 

 become part of its available stock, who do not know that a 

 right conclusion may be drawn from a combination of impres- 

 sions each of which in itself is inadequate and may be mis- 

 leading, who forget that overfeeding means sterility and who 

 short-circuit appreciation and realisation with their collateral 

 mental effects in their eagerness — natural perhaps but due 

 to misapprehension of the position — to arrive at some visible 

 result, to teach some definite formula, some bare facts; but 



