LVIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
artist, that those who follow after others rarely outstrip them. To 
hold up before the student, either by theory or practice, solely the 
ideal of acquiring what has already been learned is mediævalism pure 
and simple; it is to teach him to creep where he might walk upright 
and alone; it is to rob him in part of that intellectual birthright of 
independent thought which is the inheritance of every man, at least 
since the Renaissance. It is sometimes objected that the results 
attained by research students are often trivial or futile. J am dis- 
posed, however, to agree with a remark made by one of George Eliot’s 
characters: “ Failure after long perseverance is much grander (and 
I would say parenthetically more useful) than never to have a striving 
good enough to be called a failure.” It is sometimes also urged that 
research in the immature student leads to superficiality and conceit. 
I cannot but think this fear ill-grounded. It has been proved on 
the contrary that nothing will so quickly ripen and enlarge prelimin- 
ary knowledge and so effectually extinguish presumption as the hand- 
to-hand struggle with some special problem in the department of study 
in which the student is already proficient. 
Apart from the professor and student, the first effect of the 
inauguration of research work in our universities, if of the genuine 
stamp, will be felt upon the teaching profession of the country as 
a whole. Assuming an educated and interested public opinion, the 
premium so long placed upon memorized knowledge will disappear, 
and a change in the principle of selection of teachers both in univer- 
sities and secondary schools will result. The time will have gone 
by, let us hope, when a Huxley will be passed over, as was the case 
fifty years ago, when a chair in Natural History in the Provincial 
University was to be filled. 
We come finally to the effect of research upon the national life. 
Canada, it is true, is barely on the threshold of national existence, 
rich, however, in natural resources, and richer still in the physical, 
moral and intellectual qualities of its people. Its future as a nation 
will depend largely upon the aggregate of intellectual effort of 
its population. In this sense truly knowledge is power. The time 
has surely come when we should cease to take all our know- 
ledge at second-hand from abroad, and when we should do some 
original thinking suitable to our own circumstances. Under the 
term original thinking I do not include merely the researches of 
the laboratory, for the spirit of research which inspires the 
chemist or the philologist is one with that creative faculty which 
moves the poet and the novelist, a spirit which guides all contemporary 
movements in literature, science and art. For the development of 
