president's address. 1233 



imagination and other faculties co-operating with the memory. 

 Of such lessons I need say nothing, and they are not often 

 overdone. 



But to fix upon the barren memory tables of Specific Gravity, Sets 

 of Formulas, Lists of Classification, is not only not Science, but is 

 as much opposed to the Scientific Spirit, as the ordinary ' learning' 

 of Latin Grammar. Many things must certainly be learnt by 

 heart before they can be understood ; and a vast proportion of the 

 information which it is necessary to acquire must be taken on 

 trust, and from authority. This is as true of what is called 

 * Science ' as of any other kind of ' Learning.' And it is quite 

 possible to be very glib in Scientific Terminology, and well 

 crammed with Scientific dogmas, without having gained one breath 

 of the Scientific Spirit. 



This is the state of Barry Cornwall's "Tutors of Hall and College, 

 with a great deal of learning and little knowledge." If you 

 asked an average teacher — who could reel off at a moment's notice 

 the number of miles in the diameter of the sun, the earth, and the 

 mocn, their distances, times of revolution, nay their very weights — 

 why the moon rises later every night ; why the sun moves through 

 the Signs of the Zodiac ; why planets sometimes move faster, 

 sometimes slower than the fixed stars, he would probably answer 

 that these questions were improperly put. In most cases you 

 would gain no further information. Yet these are the obvious 

 phenomena which his book learning is only acquired because 

 it is supposed to explain, and which it does explain if it be 

 properly used. And this brings us to a practical definition 

 of what is to be regarded as the elementary scientific teaching 

 proper for general schools. Every subject is scientifically taught 

 when the phenomena which it presents are fully explained to 

 the understanding of the pupil — even though that explanation 

 may involve the acceptance of a vast number of facts and 

 laws which it is impossible to demonstrate to him, but the 

 meaning of which he can understand, and the proof of which 

 he believes on sufficient authority to be complete. 



