PBESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION I. 413 



exercise with dumb-bells. Nor are they perfect as instruments 

 of reasoning, since they accustom men to deal only with cer- 

 tainties, whereas life's problems consist of probabilities and 

 experiences. Socrates, in " The Eepublic," says to Glaucon, 

 "In all my experience I have hardly ever known a mathema- 

 tician who could reason." He had not the advantage of know- 

 ing the eminent mathematicians of this century, or he would 

 probably have expressed himself in less general terms ; but, 

 still, his meaning is clear. Mathematics can only deal effec- 

 tively with absolute truth and limited conditions ; they do not 

 give the power of balancing arguments, or analysing ideas, or 

 dealing with problems which proceed from complex premisses ; 

 they produce a narrow and positive frame of mind, which, 

 when confronted with the difficulties of social, political, or 

 theological problems, falls back in despair on earthly preju- 

 dices. 



Science has, in my opinion, a higher value than mathe- 

 matics in school education. It is more literary ; it deals wdth 

 the phenomena of nature around us, and gives us an intelli- 

 gent interest in the wonders of the universe ; it teaches the 

 habit of observation and experiment, and impresses on us all a 

 belief in the reign of Law, through the lowest as well as the 

 highest works of creation. Science-teaching at schools should 

 not be made mere memory- work — the learning by heart of lists 

 of orders, and atomic weights and chemical formula, — nor mere 

 mathematical work, as it often is in physics ; but it should be 

 kept as literary and practical as possible ; it should train the 

 mind to watch for and explain clearly causes and effects, 

 instead of merely tabulating results ; it should deal with the 

 simpler phenomena rather than with the more complex, for 

 only a specialist can follow the reasoning in the higher pro- 

 blems. At school, w^e should be content to teach the elements 

 of many sciences — that is to say, the outlines of chemistry, 

 physics, botany, physiology, geology, and astronomy : there we 

 C£tn teach " something about everything " in science, and later 

 on the "everything of something" can be learnt, when the 

 pupil has discovered which branch is most attractive to him. 

 The main defect of science as the dominant element of educa- 

 tion lies in this : that, while it deals with the past of the 

 physical world, and shows us what has happened to the stones 

 and elements, it tells us but little of what has happened to 

 man, and nothing of what has been done by individual men. 

 It therefore lacks what I have called humanising power ; it 

 does not make the heart more tender and sympathetic, nor the 

 soul more strong by contact with the souls of the best and 

 noblest that have lived, as does literature ; it does not help us 

 in the political and social problems of the day, by showing the 

 rise and fall of nations in the past ; it does not fill us with 



