

WILL/AM .s /AM//.. v\, /../ v '..s. 279 



having, indeed, been irregular, and cut short much too 

 soon which surely is the minimum of knowledge that could 

 ly he possessed of that language. Yet even this amount of 

 knowledge of (I reek has stood me in good stead, because it has 

 enabled me at any rate to use those letters in mathematical 

 formula), and on a push to puzzle out some of those Greek names 

 whieh are given to scientific instruments. In this case at least, 

 'lingly little knowledge has proved no danger but a consider- 

 able advantage to me, and it would not be difficult to multiply 

 examples to the same effect. A little knowledge of a modern 

 language will be best appreciated by an English person who, 

 speaking no language but his own, has occasion to go abroad. 

 Arriving at his destination he finds that he is unable to make the 

 railway porter understand what conveyance he intends to take, 

 and where he intends to go ; his perplexity will be still greater 

 when on entering a restaurant, say at Paris, he is presented with 

 a -bill of fare extending over several pages, from which to select 

 his dinner. In despair he points at random to some of the 

 enumerations of dishes, and finds to his discomfiture that the one 

 is presented to him in the form of a pate of snails, another as a 

 preparation of legs of frogs, and the third as water ice with which 

 to appease an appetite quite equal to roast beef, potatoes, and 

 cheese. 



In physical science a little knowledge may be a matter of the 

 greatest importance to an artisan when he is called upon to set a 

 machine to work, and is stopped by some such accidental cause as 

 the accumulation of air below a valve, or unequal expansion due 

 to a local source of heat. The knowledge of a few fundamental 

 laws of physical science will at once enable him to divine the 

 cause of difficulty, which has only to be recognized in order to be 

 removed. I should, therefore, be disposed to reverse the proverb, 

 and to say that " A little knowledge is an excellent thing," only it 

 must be understood that this little is fundamental knowledge ; 

 that it is not the knowledge of the conceited pretender who has 

 committed to memory a few scraps of information on a particular 

 subject ; who quotes a Greek author without having learned as 

 much of the language as I have ; who speaks of planetary per- 

 turbations without having a knowledge of the fundamental law of 

 gravitation ; or who pretends to know all about steam e 



