ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS. 285 



We cannot yield the companionship of our loftier 

 brothers of antiquity, of our Socrates and Cato, 

 whose lives provoke us to sympathetic greatness across 

 the interval of two thousand years. As long as the 

 ancient languages are the means of access to the an- 

 cient mind, they must ever be of priceless value to hu- 

 manity; but surely these avenues might be kept open 

 without making such sacrifices as that above referred 

 to, universal. We have conquered and possessed our- 

 selves of continents of land, concerning which antiqui- 

 ty knew nothing; and if new continents of thought 

 reveal themselves to the exploring human spirit, shall 

 we not possess them also? In these latter days, the 

 study of Physics has given us glimpses of the methods 

 of Nature which were quite hidden from the ancients, 

 and we should be false to the trust committed to us, 

 if we were to sacrifice the hopes and aspirations of the 

 Present out of deference to the Past. 



The bias of my own education probably manifests 

 itself in a desire I always feel to seize upon every pos- 

 sible opportunity of checking my assumptions and 

 conclusions by experience. In the present case, it is 

 true, your own consciousness might be appealed to in 

 proof of the tendency of the human mind to inquire 

 into the phenomena presented to it by the senses; but 

 I trust you will excuse me if, instead of doing this, I 

 take advantage of the facts which have fallen in my 

 way through life, referring to your judgment to de- 

 cide whether such facts are truly representative and 

 general, and not merely individual and local. 



At an agricultural college in Hampshire, with 

 which I was connected for some time, and which is 

 now converted into a school for the general education 

 of youth, a Society was formed among the boys, who 

 met weekly for the purpose of reading reports and 



