VIII UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 



I do not know what the requirements of your 

 examiners may be, but I sincerely trust they are 

 not satisfied with a mere book knowledge of these 

 matters. For my own part I would not raise a 

 finger, if I could thereby introduce mere book 

 work in science into every Arts curriculum in the 

 country. Let those who want to study books 

 devote themselves to Literature, in which we have 

 the perfection of books, both as to substance and as 

 to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known 

 aphorism, I would say that " books are the money 

 of Literature, but only the counters of Science," 

 Science (in the sense in which I now use the term) 

 being the knowledge of fact, of which every verbal 

 description is but an incomplete and symbolic 

 expression. And be assured that no teaching of 

 science is worth anything, as a mental discipline, 

 which is not based upon direct perception of the 

 facts, and practical exercise of the observing and 

 logical faculties upon them. Even in such a simple 

 matter as the mere comprehension of form, ask the 

 most practised and widely informed anatomist what 

 is the difference between his knowledge of a 

 structure which he has read about, and his know- 

 ledge of the same structure when he has seen it for 

 himself; and he will tell you that the two things 

 are not comparable the difference is infinite. 

 Thus I am very strongly inclined to agree with 

 some learned schoolmasters who say that, in their 

 experience, the teaching of science is all waste time. 



