no Selections from Huxley 



which delighted me most of all; and, if I had not been 

 ashamed of plagiarizing, and if I had not been sure of 

 being found out, I should have been glad to have copied 

 very much of what Mr. Freeman said, simply putting in 

 5 the word science for history. There was one notable pas- 

 sage: "The difference between good and bad teaching 

 mainly consists in this, whether the words used are really 

 clothed with a meaning or not." And Mr. Freeman gives 

 a remarkable example of this. He says, when a little girl 



10 was asked where Turkey was, she answered that it was in 

 the yard with the other fowls, and that showed she had a 

 definite idea connected with the word Turkey, and was, so 

 far, worthy of praise. I quite agree with that commenda- 

 tion; but what a curious thing it is that one should now 



15 find it necessary to urge that this is the be-all and end-all 

 of scientific instruction the sine qua non, the absolutely 

 necessary condition, and yet that it was insisted upon 

 more than two hundred years ago by one of the greatest 

 men science ever possessed in this country, William Har- 



20 vey. Harvey wrote, or at least published, only two 

 small books, one of which is the well-known treatise on the 

 circulation of the blood. The other, the Exercitationes de 

 Generatione, is less known, but not less remarkable. And 

 not the least valuable part of it is the preface, in which 



25 there occurs this passage : " Those who, reading the words 

 of authors, do not form sensible images of the things 

 referred to, obtain no true ideas, but conceive false 

 imaginations and inane phantasms." You see, William 

 Harvey's words are just the same in substance as those 



30 of Mr. Freeman, only they happen to be rather more than 

 two centuries older. So that what I am now saying has 

 its application elsewhere than in science ; but assuredly in 

 science the condition of knowing, of your own knowledge, 

 things which you talk about, is absolutely imperative. 



