NATURAL SCIENCE TO GENERAL SCIENCE. 25 



method, but they may also draw encouragement from 

 the greatness of their results. And I do think that our 

 age has learnt many lessons from the physical sciences. 

 The absolute, unconditional reverence for facts, and the 

 fidelity with which they are collected, a certain distrust- 

 fulness of appearances, the effort to detect in all cases 

 relations of cause and effect, and the tendency to assume 

 their existence, which distinguish our century from pre- 

 ceding ones, seem to me to point to such an influence. 



I do not intend to go deeply into the question how 

 far mathematical studies, as the representatives of con- 

 scious logical reasoning, should take a more important 

 place in school education. But it is, in reality, one of 

 the questions of the day. In proportion as the range of 

 science extends, its system and organisation must be 

 improved, and it must inevitably come about that in- 

 dividual students will find themselves compelled to go 

 through a stricter course of training than grammar is in 

 a position to supply. What strikes me in my own ex- 

 perience of students who pass from our classical schools 

 to scientific and medical studies, is first, a certain laxity 

 in the application of strictly universal laws. The gram- 

 matical rules, in which they have been exercised, are 

 for the most part followed by long lists of exceptions ; 

 accordingly they are not in the habit of relying implicitly 

 on the certainty of a legitimate deduction from a strictly 

 universal law. Secondly, I find them for the most part 

 too much inclined to trust to authority, even in cases 

 where they might form an independent judgment. In 

 fact, in philological studies, inasmuch as it is seldom 

 possible to take in the whole of the premisses at a glance, 

 and inasmuch as the decision of disputed questions often 

 depends on an aesthetic feeling for beauty of expres- 

 sion, and for the genius of the language, attainable 

 only by long training, it must often happen that the 



