2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



if the teacher can not draw ? The instinct of imitation in man is irre- 

 sistible. Slovenly drawing on the blackboard — sufficient evidence of 

 the teacher's imperfect information and inaccurate conception of facts, 

 the nature of which he only thinks he understands — can do little more 

 than raise a cold fog of suspicion in the class-room, by which the ten- 

 der sprouts of learning must be either dwarfed or killed. But even 

 slovenly diagrams are preferable to purchased ones, for whatever 

 diminishes the dead-work of a teacher enervates his investigating and 

 thereby his demonstrating powers, and lowers him toward the level of 

 his scholars. 



Were I a dictator, I should drive all teachers of science out into 

 the great field of dead- work, force them to go through all the gymnas- 

 tics of original research and its description, and not permit them to 

 return to their libraries until their note-books were full of their own 

 measurements and calculations, sketch-maps and form-drawings, se- 

 verely accurate and logically classified, to be then compared with those 

 recorded in the books. What teachers fail to keep in mind is this : 

 that learning is not knowledge ; but, as Lessing says : " Learning is 

 only our knowledge of the experience of others ; knowledge is our 

 own." No man really comprehends what he himself has not created. 

 Therefore we know nothing of the universe until we take it to pieces 

 for inspection and rebuild it for our understanding. Nor can one man 

 do this for another — each must do it for himself — and all that one can 

 do to help another is to show him how he himself has morsellated and 

 recomposed his small particular share of concrete nature, and inspire 

 him with those vague but hopeful suggestions of ideas which we call 

 learning, but which are not science. 



My third proposition was, that an expert in practical science can 

 command the respect and confidence of his professional fellows, and, 

 through their free suffrages, build up his own reputation in the learned 

 and business worlds, only in exact proportion to the amount of good 

 dead-work to whiich he voluntarily subjects himself. For, although 

 the most of it is necessarily done in secrecy and silence, enough of it 

 leaks out to testify to his honest and diligent self-cultivation, and 

 enough of it must show in the shape of scientific wisdom to make self- 

 evident the fact that he is neither a tyro nor a charlatan. More than 

 once I have heard the merry jest of the Australasian judge quoted 

 with sinister application to experts in science. When a young col- 

 league, just arrived from England, asked him for advice, he answered, 

 " Pronounce your decisions, but beware of stating your reasons for 

 them." Many an ephemeral reputation for science has been begot by 

 this shrewd policy ; but the best policy to wear well is honesty, and 

 honesty in trade means selling what is genuine, well made, and dura- 

 ble, and honesty in science means, first, facts well proved, and then, 

 conclusions slowly and painfully deduc(^d from facts well proved, in 

 sufficient number and order of arrangement to exhaust alike the s<ub- 



