UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL, 57 



The passages I have quoted were uttered by John Stuart Mill ; 

 but you cannot hear inverted commas, and it is therefore right that I 

 should add, without delay, that I have taken the liberty of substituting 

 " workers in science " for " ancient dialecticians," and " science as 

 an essential ingredient in education" for "the ancient languages as 

 our best literary education." Mill did, in fact, deliver a noble pane- 

 gyric upon classical studies. I do not doubt its justice, nor presume to 

 question its wisdom. But I venture to maintain that no wise or just 

 judge, who has a knowledge of the facts, will hesitate to say that it 

 applies with equal force to scientific training. 



But it is only fair to the Scottish universities to point out that 

 they have long understood the value of science as a branch of general 

 education. I observe, with the greatest satisfaction, that candidates 

 for the degree of Master of Arts in this university are required to 

 have a knowledge, not only of mental and moral philosophy, and of 

 mathematics and natural philosophy, but of natural history, in addi- 

 tion to the ordinary Latin and Greek course ; and that a candidate 

 may take honors in these subjects and in chemistry. 



I do not know what the requirements of your examiners may be, 

 but I sincerely trust they are not satisfied with a mere book-knowl- 

 edge 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 

 devote 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 science," 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 symbolic ex- 

 pression. And be assured that no teaching of science is worth any 

 thing, as a mental discipline, which is not based upon direct percep. 

 tion of the facts, and practical exercise of the observing and logical 

 faculties upon them. Even in such a simple matter as the mere com- 

 prehension of form, ask the most practised and widely-informed anato- 

 mist what is the difierence 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 will tell you that the two 

 things are not comparable — the difference is infinite. Thus I am 

 very strongly inclined to agree with some learned school-masters who 

 say that, in their experience, the teaching of science is all waste time. 

 As they teach it, I have no doubt it is. But, to teach it otherwise, 

 requires an amount of personal labor and a development of means and 

 appliances, which must strike horror and dismay into a man accus- 

 tomed to mere book-work, and who has been in the habit of teaching 

 a class of fifty without much strain upon his energies. And this is 

 one of the real difficulties in the way of the introduction of physical 



