300 INSTRUCTION IN PHYSIOLOGY 



XI 



If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe 

 that it is other than a very valuable possession, 

 however infinitesimal its quantity may be. 

 Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where 

 is the man who has so much as to be out of 

 danger ? 



If William Harvey 's life-long labours had re- 

 vealed to him a tenth part of that which may be 

 made sound and real knowledge to our boys and 

 girls, he would not only have been what he was, 

 the greatest physiologist of his age, but he would 

 have loomed upon the seventeenth century as a 

 sort of intellectual portent. Our "little know- 

 ledge " would have been to him a great, astounding, 

 unlooked-for vision of scientific truth. 



I really see no harm which can come of giving 

 our children a little knowledge of physiology. 

 But then, as I have said, the instruction must be 

 real, based upon observation, eked out by good 

 explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed 

 by a teacher whose own knowledge has been 

 acquired by a study of the facts ; and not the 

 mere catechismal parrot-work which too often 

 usurps the place of elementary teaching. 



It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to give a 

 formal contradiction to the silly fiction, which is 

 assiduously circulated by fanatics who not only 

 ought to know, but do know, that their assertions 

 are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction 

 of that experimental discipline which is absolutely 



