VII SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 167 



often, on a mass of boys, a certain influence which, I think, was 

 hardly anticipated, and to which a good deal of value must be 

 attached — an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is 

 shown in the increased and increasing respect for precision of 

 statement, and for that form of veracity which consists in the 

 acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real eff'ect to 

 find that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention 

 given to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curi- 

 ous only, soon becomes minute, serious, and practical." 



Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen 

 better words to express — in fact, I have, in other 

 words, expressed the same conviction in former 

 days — what the influence of scientific teaching, if 

 properly carried out, must be. 



But now comes the question of properly carry- 

 ing it out, because, when I hear the value of school 

 teaching in physical science disputed, my first im- 

 pulse is to ask the disputer, " What have you 

 known about it?" and he generally tells me some 

 lamentable case of failure. Then I ask, " What 

 are the circumstances of the case, and how was 

 the teaching carried out ? " I remember, some 

 few years ago, hearing of the head master of a 

 large school, who had expressed great dissatisfac- 

 tion with the adoption of the teaching of physical 

 science — and that after experiment. But the ex- 

 periment consisted in this — in asking one of the 

 junior masters in the school to get up science, in 

 order to teach it; and the young gentleman went 

 away for a year and got up science and taught it. 

 Well, I have no doubt that the result was as disnp- 

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