PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 713 



step to ensure in a scientific training. This is nowadays accepted as 

 a truism, and yet how much we often fall short of making this an 

 essential feature. How much easier is it for a teacher to unload a 

 bundle of information stamped with the authority of lecturer or text- 

 book than to put the learner in the way of acquiring the same know- 

 ledge at first hand. To the extent that final resrJts are placed before 

 the learner is his scientific training short-circuited. Dogmatic teach- 

 ing is to be avoided, and the textbook relegated to its right place — 

 and that a very inferior one — so that the learner may acquire the habit 

 of trusting his own senses in preference to the dicta of the book. 



Looking back on my own experience as a student, I see various 

 stages through which scientific teaching has evolved. When first I 

 studied chemistry it was with the sole aid of little Roscoe — no experi- 

 ments, no laboratory. Next I attended lectures accompanied with 

 demonstrations, and later on I came into contact with actual investiga- 

 tion. I well remember the inspiration which I felt when attending 

 lectures on Avork which had been the special study of the lecturer, and 

 seeing the apparatus from which new and important scientific results 

 had been obtained. There was all the difierence between science and 

 non-science. I felt that I had entered the inner shrine. Previously 

 I had gazed upon the outer walls, surveyed its external appearance, 

 but here was the delight attaching to a view of the inner mysteries. 

 Borrowing Huxley's metaphor, I now saw the faces of the pictures 

 which had formerly been turned to the wall. To come into touch 

 as a student with actual scientific research is a priceless boon. The 

 inspiration drawn from the latter is a lasting source of delight ; the 

 alternative is, to say the least, deadening. That the atmosphere in 

 scientific training should reek of research is generally admitted. 

 Professor Armstrong has long advocated the heuristic method on this 

 principle in even the most elementary work. A former teacher of 

 mine once remarked to me that there is not the simplest work handled 

 in the laboratory which may not be the subject of scientific research. 

 It is not meant that valuable results meriting publication should be 

 sought after, but the spirit of inquiry into actual facts should be 

 vigorously inculcated. How infinitely fuller of meaning is anything 

 actually observed in the laboratory or elsewhere than that which we 

 merely read or hear. What is life itself but the accumulated inferences 

 drawn from daily experience, the more successful as our observation 

 has been closer and our inferences more accurate '? 



The mind of the youth being in course of development is unable 

 to appreciate and clearly realise the information unloaded before him 

 from the stores of knowledge acquired by those of greater years. He 

 must see for himself ere the knowledge becomes incorporated into 

 his being. I repeat that the advantages derivable from a proper train- 

 ing in science depend upon the close contact on the part of the learner 

 with actual things. 



I do not intend to deal with scientific as compared with literary 

 and classical training ; yet it is interesting to note that in the teaching 

 of literature the scientific method is asserting itself. Learners after 



