ELEMENTARY MAGNETISM 365 



taken for science itself. I might, of course, ring changes 

 on the steam-engine and the telegraph, the electrotype and 

 the photograph, the medical applications of physics, and 

 the various other inlets by which scientific thought filters 

 into practical life. That would be easy compared with 

 the task of informing you how you are to make the study 

 of physics the instrument of your pupil's culture; how 

 you are to possess its facts and make them living seeds 

 which shall take root and grow in the mind, and not lie 

 like dead lumber in the storehouse of memory. This is a 

 task much heavier than the mere recounting of scientific 

 achievements; and it is one which, feeling my own want 

 of time to execute it aright, I might well hesitate to 

 accept. 



But let me sink excuses, and attack the work before 

 me. First and foremost, then, I would advise you to get 

 a knowledge of facts from actual observation. Facts 

 looked at directly are vital; when they pass into words 

 half the sap is taken out of them. You wish, for exam- 

 ple, to get a knowledge of magnetism; well, provide your- 

 self with a good book on the subject, if you can, but do 

 not be content with what the book tells you; do not be 

 satisfied with its descriptive woodcuts; see the operations 

 of the force yourself. Half of our book writers describe 

 experiments which they never made, and their descrip- 

 tions often lack both force and truth; but, no matter how 

 clever or conscientious they may be, their written words 

 cannot supply the place of actual observation. Every fact 

 has numerous radiations, which are shorn off by the man 

 who describes it. Go, then, to a philosophical instrument 

 maker, and give a shilling or half a crown for a straight 

 bar-magnet, or, if you can afford it, purchase a pair of 



