VIII UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL 213 



I do not know what the requirements of your 

 examiners may be, but I sincerely trust they are 

 not satisfied with a mere book knowledge of these 

 matters. For my own part I would not raise a 

 finger, if I could thereby introduce mere book 

 work in science into every Arts curriculum in the 

 country. Let those who want to study books de- 

 vote themselves to Literature, in which we have 

 the perfection of books, both as to substance and 

 as to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well- 

 known aphorism, I would say that " books are the 

 money of Literature, but only the counters of Sci- 

 ence," Science (in the sense in which I now use the 

 term) being the knowledge of fact, of which every 

 verbal description is but an incomplete and sym- 

 bolic expression. And be assured that no teach- 

 ing of science is worth anything, as a mental dis- 

 cipline, which is not based upon direct perception 

 of the facts, and practical exercise of the observing 

 and logical faculties upon them. Even in such a 

 simple matter as the mere comprehension of form, 

 ask the most practised and widely informed anato- 

 mist what is the difi^erence between his knowledge 

 of a structure which he has read about, and his 

 knowledge of the same structure when he has seen 

 it for himself; and he wilLtell vou that the two 

 things are not comparable — the difference is in- 

 finite. Thus I am very strongly inclined to agree 

 with some learned schoolmasters who say that, in 

 their experience, the teaching of science is all 



