418 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



regard to the connection between physical processes and 

 mental phenomena he says: "I will, indeed, willingly 

 grant that we can find certain gradations, certain definite 

 points at which we trace a passage from mental processes 

 to processes purely physical, or of a physical character. 

 Throughout this discourse I am not asserting that it will 

 never be possible to bring psychical processes into an im- 

 mediate connection with those that are physical. All I 

 say is that we have at present no right to set up this pos- 

 sible connection as a doctrine of science." In the next 

 paragraph lie reiterates his position with reference to the 

 introduction of such topics into school teaching. "We 

 must draw," he says, "a strict distinction between what 

 we wish to teach, and what we wish to search for. The 

 objects of our research are expressed as problems (or hy- 

 potheses). We need not keep them to ourselves ; we are 

 ready to communicate them to all the world, and say, * There 

 is the problem ; that is what we strive for. ' . . . The in- 

 vestigation of such problems, in which the whole nation 

 may be interested, cannot be restricted to any one. This 

 is Freedom of Inquiry. But the problem (or hypothesis) is 

 not, without further debate, to be made a doctrine. 11 He 

 will not concede to Dr. Haeckel "that it is a question for 

 the schoolmasters to decide, whether the Darwinian theory 

 of man's descent should be at once laid down as the basis 

 of instruction, and the protoplastic soul be assumed as the 

 foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being." The 

 Professor concludes his lecture thus: "With perfect truth 

 did Bacon say of old l /Scientia est potential But he also 

 defined that knowledge ; and the knowledge he meant was 

 not speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypothe- 

 ses, but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentle- 



