250 UJTBODUCTORY LBCTUBB ON EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS. 



which the instrument*, the methods, and the observers themselves, are being 

 gradually fitted for their work. When we have thus brought together the 

 requisite*, both material and intellectual, for a particular experiment, it may 

 sometimes be desirable that before the instruments are dismounted and the 

 observers dispersed, we should make some other experiment, requiring the same 

 method, but dealing perhaps with an entirely different class of physical phe- 



nomOMk 



Our principal work, however, in the Laboratory must be to acquaint our- 

 selves with all kinds of scientific methods, to compare them, and to estimate 

 their value. It will, I think, be a result worthy of our University, and more 

 likely to be accomplished here than in any private laboratory, if, by the free 

 and full discussion of the relative value of different scientific procedures, uc 

 succeed in forming a school of scientific criticism, and in assisting the develop- 

 ment of the doctrine of method. 



But admitting that a practical acquaintance with the methods of Physical 

 Science is an essential part of a mathematical and scientific education, we may 

 be asked whether we are not attributing too much importance to science alto- 

 gether as part of a liberal education. 



Fortunately, there is no question here whether the University should con- 

 tinue to be a place of liberal education, or should devote itself to preparing 

 young men for particular professions. Hence though some of us may, I hope, 

 see reason to make the pursuit of science the main business of our lives, it 

 must be one of our most constant aims to maintain a living connexion between 

 our work and the other liberal studies of Cambridge, whether literary, philological, 

 historical or philosophical. 



There is a narrow professional spirit which may grow up among men of 

 science, just as it does among men who practise any other special business. 

 But surely a University is the very place where we should be able to over- 

 come this tendency of men to become, as it were, granulated into small worlds, 

 which are all the more worldly for their very smallness. We lose the ad- 

 vantage of having men of varied pursuits collected into one body, if we do not 

 endeavour to imbibe some of the spirit even of those whose special branch of 

 learning is different from our own. 



It is not so long ago since any man who devoted himself to geometry, 

 or to any science requiring continued application, was looked upon as necessarily 

 a misanthrope, who must have abandoned all human interests, and betaken 





