ADDRESS. Ixxxiii 



ducted; on the conception, in fact, which we entertain of what science really 

 is. Nothing can be easier than so to teach science as to feed every mental 

 vice or weakness which obstructs the progress of knowledge, or blinds men to 

 every evidence of new truths, in self-satisfied contemplation of the few they 

 have already ascertained. May we not illustrate this by the effect which has not 

 seldom been produced by the scientific education of professions ? It is true, 

 indeed, that professional men have often enlarged the field of science by the 

 discovery of new and important truths. Some of the strongest-armed pioneers 

 of science have been of this class. But how have their discoveries been too 

 often received by their professional brethren? How many of them have 

 been assailed by every weapon in the extensive armoury of prejudice and 

 bigotry ! How many of them have had their name recognized only after it 

 had been written on the grave ! and over whom we might well repeat the 

 noble lines — 



Now thy brows are cold 



We see thee, what thou art, and know 



Thy likeness to the wise below, 



Thy kindred with the great of old. 



What we want in the teaching of the young, is, not so much the mere 

 results, as the methods, and, above all, the history of science. How, and by 

 what steps it has advanced ; with what large admixture of error every new 

 truth has been at first surrounded ; by what patient watchings and careful 

 reasonings; by wliat chance suggestions and happy thoughts ; by what doci- 

 lity of mind, and faith in the fullness of Nature's meanings ; in short, by 

 what kinds of power and virtue, the great men, aye, and the lesser men of 

 science have each contributed their quota to her progress ; this is what we 

 ought to teach, if we desire to see education well conducted to the great ends 

 in view. It is not merely for the sake of investing the abstractions of science 

 with something of a living and human interest, that we should recall and re- 

 vive these passages in her history : nor is it merely to impress her results 

 better on the memory, as we fill up from biographies and other sources of 

 Information, the meagre page of the general historian. It is for something 

 more than this. It is both that they may be more encouraged to observe 

 nature, and that they may better understand how to do so with effect. It 

 is that they may cultivate that temper of mind to which she most loves to 

 reveal her secrets. And as regards those whose own opportunities of obser- 

 vation may be small, it is that they may better appreciate the labours of 

 others ; and may be enabled to recognize, in the midst, perhaps, of much ex- 

 travagance, the tokens of real genius, and in the midst of much error the 

 golden sands of truth. 



It is one of the many observations of Sir C. Lyell which have a much 

 wider application than tjiat to which they were specially directed, that the 

 mistake of looking too exclusively to the grand results of geological change, 

 and of referring them too readily to sudden agencies of tremendous activity 

 and power, tended to check the advance of that science, by discouraging 

 habits of watchfulness over those operations which are contemporary with 

 ourselves, and the secret of whose power is to be found in the lapse of time. 

 An effect precisely analogous is produced on the progress of science as a 

 whole by a similar method of regarding it. And even when the history of 

 that progress is attended to at all, there is a natural disposition to look back 

 to a few great names among the number of its chief promoters, as Beings 

 who, by dint only of some unapproachable superiority of intellect, have 

 taught us all we know. It is true, indeed, there have been a few such men; 

 just as there have been periods of sudden geological operations, which have 



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