at the Royal Institution, 1908-1916 781 



insisted upon and gradually but all too slowly and imperfectly 

 realized, the part the Institution has played in advancing scientific 

 knowledge should be taken specially into account and more widely 

 known. The educational facilities it offers have yet to be appreciated 

 in a proper manner. I can speak from a long experience and can 

 bear personal witness of the great value the lectures were to me even 

 as a student. My connexion with the Institution dates back to- 

 1867, when I was working at the Royal College of Chemistry, in 

 Oxford Street, under Frankland, who was also Professor of Chemistry 

 at the Royal Institation. We were then engaged in developing ai 

 new method of water analysis, which involved much gas analysis. A 

 very beautiful instrument for such work, devised by Frankland and 

 Ward, was mounted in one of the windows of the present store-room 

 on the ground floor of the Institution ; during the latter part of 

 18G6 and the earher part of 1867, I almost daily carried tubes in 

 which gas had been collected over mercury from Oxford Street down 

 Bond Street to the Institution to analyse them with the aid of this 

 apparatus. This led to my frequent attendance at the lectures. In 

 those days Tyndall was at the height of his career as a public lecturer : 

 his lucidity was wonderful, the perfection of his demonstrations 

 marvellous. The educational value of such lectures cannot be exag- 

 gerated : we need, in some way, to recover the art which Tyndall 

 practised so successfully — perhaps this may come when we rescue 

 some of the intelligence of the country from the bar and divert it 

 into science, at least there is an opportunity for some wholehearted 

 attempt to reproduce an atmosphere such as Faraday created, that of 

 simple wonderment and reverent inquiry into the marvels of Nature. 



But Faraday and Tyndall were at pains to be explicit and clear. 

 The modern lecturer often lacks breadth of outlook and is too rapid, 

 too special and technical in his treatment of his theme, therefore 

 above his audience. Far too often results are made known but no 

 inkling given of the method followed in obtaining them. 



Undoubtedly, lectures on scientific subjects do not attract in the 

 way they did formerly — perhaps this is because science has been 

 admitted into society and is no longer a Bohemian occupation but 

 almost one of respectability : or because it has vanquished ecclesias- 

 ticism and freedom of opinion is no longer denied us — this fight 

 being over, public attention is not aroused by our disputes. 



Faraday's address, entitled " Observations on the Inertia of the 

 Mind," read at the City Philosophical Society in 1818, may well be 

 studied in this connexion. In it he says that — 



" Man is an improving animal. ... In knowledge, that man only 

 is to be contemned and despised who is not in a state of transition. 

 We are by our nature progressive." 



Modern education apparently is not based upon such a view. 

 The failure of our " public schools " to develop a desire for know- 



