October i, 1914] 



NATURE 



125 



us of an unwearied investigator of Vesuvian pheno- 

 mena, contributed two notes in July, 1913, on recent 

 changes in the crater which, in his opinion, point 

 to an early revival of activity after seven years' rest. 

 Mr. O. De Fiore, in a memoir on the period of 

 repose in Vesuvius which began in 1906 {Aiti, No. 14), 

 remarks that the great outbursts attract most atten- 

 tion, but urges that the intervening periods of repose 

 ;ire also deserving of study, for it is through their 

 investigation that we may be led to foresee a coming 

 revival of activity. He distinguishes three principal, 

 though overlapping, phases in the Vesuvian period 

 of repose, to the first of which — the degradation of 

 recent forms — the present memoir is devoted. Lastly 

 Dr. A. Malladra, of the Vesuvian observator\-, 

 describes the solfatara of the .\trio del Cavallo, which 

 separates the modern cone of the volcano from the 

 cliffs of Monte Somma. 



THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING OF THE 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



SECTION L. 



educational science. 



Opening Address by Prof. John Perry, D.Sc, 

 LL.D., F.R.S., President of the Section. 



I WISH to make some general remarks upon the 

 science of education. As in the chapter which was 

 entitled "The Snakes of Iceland," and which merely 

 consisted of the sentence, "There are no snakes in 

 Iceland," I might finish this Address at once by saying 

 "There is no science of education." There is the art 

 or practice of teaching or pedagogy, just as there 

 used to be the art of engineering. It was only 

 slowly that the subject of Section G, the Science of 

 Engineering, was created ; but the subject of Section 

 L, this section, has still to be created. In the creation 

 of a science we first and for long periods have the 

 observation of detached phenomena and disputes about 

 them, because the phenomena seem complex, having 

 no obvious connection with one another ; then experi- 

 ments simplify things, and gradually the science is 

 created by inductive reasoning and research. In 

 education, observation and disputes have occupied 

 much time, and we cannot sav that the phenomena 

 have become much simplified by such experiments as 

 have been made. Every man in the street considers 

 that his opinions on education are as good as those 

 of anybody else. I suppose that almost nobody would 

 refuse to make an after-dinner speech on any kind 

 of education, whereas he would not dream of speak- 

 ing about geometry, or chemistry, or physics, or 

 physiology unless he had studied these subjects. Any 

 ordinary citizen thinks himself fit to be a member of 

 the governing body of a school or college, and the 

 disasters due to this belief are worse than what 

 would occur if we gave to such men the command of 

 ships. The ordinary man, especially the Parlia- 

 mentary man, who thinks that the members of a com- 

 mittee on some scientific business ought all to be 

 non-scientific men, will jeer at this statement, but it 

 is, nevertheless, fatally true. 



It is possible that, even if we had the science, the 

 pedagogues would pay no attention to its principles, 

 just as there are industrial chemists in London whose 

 businesses are dwindling because they pay no atten- 

 tion to the science of chemistry. Pedagogy is in a 

 worse condition than industrial chemistry, because 

 chemical products can be easily tested as good or 

 bad, whereas the pedagogic product is exceedingly 

 difficult to test. The customer is the worst of judges. 

 Those soul-destroying cheap schools described by 



NO. 2344, VOL. 94] 



Mr. Wells used to be very numerous; they are still, 

 many of them, in existence. Every observant person 

 knows of these places, to which small shopkeepers 

 still send their ^ons, because they are genteel and 

 cheap, and because Latin is taught, and perhaps 

 French. Did any such parent ever object to the 

 result of the schooling? Even when a boy has 

 become a man, neither he nor his father knows 

 whether his defects or merits are due to bad or good 

 schooling. Please read Mr. Wells's book about Mr. 

 Polly. Again, the reforms in pedagogy which, with 

 Dr. Armstrong, I have been clamouring for during 

 the last thirty years, would cause the best-known 

 pedagogues to scrap all their machinery, and so to 

 lose nearly the whole of their invested capital. Even 

 when they are not influenced by the idea of losing 

 money, these men cannot be made to believe in the 

 necessity for reform any more than the Central 

 African worshippers of hideous idols can be converted, 

 for with just as much intensity do they worship the 

 product of our present schools and colleges. The 

 pedagogue is not alone in his false worship; this is 

 the day of small men, common-place men, men manu- 

 factured like so many buttons, so that it is almost 

 impossible for a great man to appear; everybodv is 

 compvelled by custom or by law to go to school, and 

 the school ideal is just as false and mean and material 

 ^ any false religion ever was. Even.- clever man 

 who has gone to' a public school and to Oxford or 

 Cambridge worships the system which has taken 

 from him his spiritual birthright, his individuality, his 

 initiative, his originality, his common-sense, his power 

 to think for himself — yes, and I may say his belief 

 in himself. He has become too much like a sheep, 

 ready to follow the bell-wether; he is a man who 

 has greatly lost his soul. Average boys leaving a 

 public school all speak in the same way, in the same 

 words, about anything. They are nearly as much 

 alike as things manufactured by the same machine. 

 An expert easily tells from what school a boy has 

 come, because there is nothing left in his mind which 

 is not common to the whole school. 



The education given in England to boys until they 

 leave school at twenty, and until they graduate at a 

 university, is almost altogether classical : that is. 

 founded on the language and literature of Greece and 

 Rome. On the day on which I wrote this there was 

 a report of an address in the Times which said that 

 this study was the cause "of all imaginative aspira- 

 tions, of all intellectual interests"; "it enabled men 

 to appreciate not only Homer and Virgil, but equally 

 Dante and Milton, Goethe, and Wordsworth, all the 

 great thoughts of all ages and all lands, and to be 

 awake to the movements of their own day." It said 

 that this study made a man " a better man of business, 

 a better lawyer, a better merchant, a better stock- 

 broker, a less hidebound politician." "Those who 

 would banish Greek or would make it the peculiar 

 property of a select few, did a grave disservice to 

 the whole cause of intellectual and spiritual life." 

 The writer then described his own diligent reading 

 in the train every morning ; in the course of a few 

 months he had read the " Iliad," the " Odyssey," the 

 ".Aieneid," five books of Livy, and the whole of 

 "Catullus" and "Martial." It seems almost as if 

 he must have all extant classical literature off by 

 heart. He must have enormous satisfaction as he 

 sits in the train looking at the quite common travellers 

 who are reading about the affairs of the nation in 

 English newspapers. I quote the above statements 

 because they are typical. .'Ml our classical friends 

 say that sort of thing. But I do not pay much 

 attention to them, because I know that the greatest 

 classical scholars only devote themselves to editing 



