PItKSIDEXTIAL ADDRESS SECTION D. 93 



specialisation and to eliminate the essential bases of medical 

 practice — chemistry, physics, botany and zoology — and to hurry 

 on to the study of what are grandiloquently termed the " pro- 

 fessional subjects." The fate of superstructures built on insecure 

 foundations is well known. 



There is need here, as in America, for provision for research 

 and investigation. It is not enough to ])rovide merely staffs 

 equipped with knowledge. " Teaching must be accompanied by 

 thinking; teaching and research are inseparable," says Dr. 

 Eycleshymer. I emphasise the necessity for the research worker 

 as the vitalising power in education generally. No mere " useful 

 hack " can advance education, nor can the classical egoist, who 

 states that there is no need for experts, and that his own 

 " commonsense " can solve any problem, really do other than 

 degrade education and sink educational ideals. Leaders of 

 thought and inspirers of men are needed, not apostles of 

 parochialism; breadth of vision, not the narrowing of outlook to 

 the pages of text-books or the study of dead languages; a live 

 knowledge of the present, not a sort of parasitism on the past. 

 As Prof. Eycleshymer says: " He who comes from the land of 

 mighty oceans, forests and mountains, thinks in larger terms than 

 he who comes from the truck farm." The moral is obvious — it is 

 a fatal mistake to have at the head of affairs joung, inexperienced 

 men, who have never had the time to acquire breadth of view 

 or a knowledge of the world, and who are trammelled and shackled 

 at every turn by their early training, in which science had no 

 part, and where the cramping influence of " village " life has left 

 a permanent mark. No matter how " brilliant " or " precocious " 

 such a one may be, he is unfitted for great positions that demand 

 thinkers of big, broad thoughts, doers of great actions and 

 utilisers of the practical experience acquired by wrestling with 

 Nature itself, and not merely wrestling, but prevailing. Only 

 older men, who have acquired experience through service, are 

 really fitted to be placed in control of their fellows. 



An unfortunate feature of recent years in the field of 

 biological research, at any rate in that of animal parasitology, 

 has been the relatively young worker with the so-called " critical 

 faculty " unduly developed. Sometimes by hurrying over or 

 neglecting to peruse the work of earlier investigators, or by undue 

 use of the method of partial quotation, such a writer expresses 

 himself in terms of strong condemnation of the work of others 

 and becomes autocratic. What is needed in science is the worker 

 of clear, unbiased views, who sees that seemingly conflicting 

 stateinents are not really in conflict, but represent, as it were, 

 different views of the same landscape. The landscape is 

 unchanged, but the appearance of it differs with the angle at 

 which it is viewed. The scientific worker who has the happy 

 faculty of reconciling apparently contradictoi*y statements l)y 

 fellow-workers, and showing that they form parts of a harmonious 

 whole, is of far greater value to the community at large than the 

 one who destroys such work and sets up his own views as solely 

 connect. Svich self-constituted autocrats are often fond of the 

 expressions " claims " and " alleges " and similar hyper-critical 



