96 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [vi. 



your notes out carefully and fully ; strive to understand them 

 thoroughly ; come to me for the explanation of anything you 

 cannot understand ; and I would rather you did not distract 

 your mind by reading.&quot; A properly composed course of lectures 

 ought to contain fully as much matter as a student can assimi 

 late in the time occupied by its delivery; and the teacher should 

 always recollect that his business is to feed, and not to cram the 

 intellect. Indeed, I believe that a student who gains from a 

 course of lectures the simple habit of concentrating his attention 

 upon a definitely limited series of facts, until they are thoroughly 

 mastered, has made a step of immeasurable importance. 



But, however good lectures may be, and however extensive 

 the course of reading by which they are followed up, they are 

 but accessories to the great instrument of scientific teaching 

 demonstration. If I insist unweariedly, nay fanatically, upon 

 the importance of physical science as an educational agent, it is 

 because the study of any branch of science, if properly con 

 ducted, appears to me to fill up a void left by all other means of 

 education. I have the greatest respect and love for literature ; 

 nothing would grieve me more than to see literary training other 

 than a very prominent branch of education : indeed, I wish that 

 real literary discipline were far more attended to than it is ; but 

 I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, that there is a vast difference 

 between men who have had a purely literary, and those who 

 have had a sound scientific, training. 



Seeking for the cause of this difference, I imagine I can find 

 it in the fact that, in the world of letters, learning and know 

 ledge are one, and books are the source of both ; whereas in 

 science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the 

 study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter. 



All that literature has to bestow may be obtained by reading 

 and by practical exercise in writing and in speaking ; but I do 

 not exaggerate when I say, that none of the best gifts of science 

 are to be won by these means. On the contrary, the great 

 benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as training 

 or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the 



