October 22, 1914] 



NATURt: 



217 



ignorance of the experimental method. I believe, 

 moreover, that the difference is fundamental and tem- 

 peramental, not to be overcome by training. Oxford, 

 owing to the bait of its classical scholarships, seems 

 to have attracted an entirely peculiar type of ability 

 nd to stand alone in consequence; at Cambridge, 

 . ing to the hold obtained by mathematics, the field 

 nas been divided, but the mathematician, in his way, 



I is often as unpractical by nature as the classic j for- 



' tunately, of late years, owing to the rise of the medical 

 -chool and that of natural science, other elements 



.; have been introduced and the university has a future 

 of infinite promise in consequence, if it will but realise 

 that its primary function is to inculcate wisdom rather 

 than to give purely professional training. 



Sympathy is only begotten of understanding; the 

 literary type of mind apparently does not and cannot 

 sympathise with the practical side of modern scientific 

 inquiry', because it has neither knowledge of the 

 methods of experimental science nor the faintest desire 

 for such knowledge. 



We need a more practical tjpe of mind for our 

 schools. Pessimist though I may appear to be, having 

 watched with close attention, all my life, the great 

 struggle that has been going on in and between 

 schools — having had the great good fortune also my- 

 self to be one of the early workers in the province of 

 technical education, and having been associated with 

 the development of one of the greatest of our boarding 

 schools (Christ's Hospital) — I am, of course, aware 

 that verj- great progress has been made, and am, in 

 event' way, hopeful of the future in store for those who 

 are unaffected by present prejudices. In my experi- 



- ence, the men to whom the progress has been due 

 have, in all cases, been trained in a broader school 

 than that of Oxford; the few escapes from Oxford 

 who have been successful reformers have been the 

 exceptions which prove the rule, as they have shown 

 themselves to be gifted with practical instincts : to 

 such men the Oxford literar\- training has been of 

 extreme value. Oxford will not gain its full value 

 until all types of ability are represented in fair pro- 

 portion by its students, not one almost exclusively. 

 When this step is taken, the incubus of the Oxford 

 spirit will no longer be upon us : it will then be pos- 

 sible for us to regard education as "a preparation for 

 life " — a formula often ' used but usually honoured, 

 hitherto, in the breach, rarely if ever in the observ- 

 ance, in our schools. 



There must be no misunderstanding. The repre- 

 sentatives of literary training rely chiefly on a past 

 into which it is well not to look too closely and must 

 always work with borrowed capital in the days to 

 come : our side has no distant past worth speaking 

 of, but is hopeful of a glorious future, in that it will 

 always be adding to its knowledge; we desire to do 

 their party all possible justice, and shall ever be in 

 need of their assistance and more than grateful for 

 the service they render us ; but it must be war to the 

 knife if they will not recognise that, in a progressive 

 age, they cannot lead any longer, that we shall decline 

 to put up in future with the conceit and narrowness 

 of outlook of the classical scholar. 



The argument I have applied to the teacher is 

 equally applicable to the taught — boys and girls, in- 

 deed students generally, are of different types; they 

 have different orders of ahilit}- and cannot be treated 

 > if all were alike. In the beginning, we may tempt 

 ■lem with all sorts of scholastic diet, but onlv. in the 

 rhain, in order to discover their aptitudes; when these 

 are found, they should be the main line of attack. In 

 saying this, I am not arguing in favour of extreme 

 specialisation but against time being wasted in 

 attempting the impossible. Some of us can learn one 

 thing, others another : the schools tr}- to force too 

 NO. 2374, VOL. 94] 



many into one mould. It is essential that we should 

 try to lay certain foundations but useless to proceed 

 when we find that some of them cannot be laid. 



This doctrine is applicable especially to the selection 

 of scholars and to the training of teachers and of 

 evening-class students. We select our scholars almost 

 entirely by literar\- tests — the result is that we select 

 persons of literary aptitude rather than those gifted 

 with practical ability for every kind of ser\-ice : like 

 necessarily breeds like. By insisting on '• grouped 

 courses " we too often oblige students to take up 

 subjects to which they are incapable of paying atteiv 

 tion with profit : most of us, probably, have found out 

 that there are many subjects which we simply cannot 

 learn, trj' as we may. 



My own experience with students has satisfied me 

 that they not only vary in abilit\^ but that the different 

 classes are of ven.' different types of mind : the 

 engineer tends to be constructive but not analytical ; 

 the analytical introspective habit of mind is more 

 highly developed in the chemist; the biologist rarely 

 has mathematical proclivities. It is useless to attempt 

 to teach all in the same way, and many can learn 

 only very little. 



The explanation of Huxley's failure to forecast the 

 future of science lies, apparently, in the fact that men 

 generally are not attuned to her ways. I am inclined 

 to think that the " mere man of letters " "wiU continue 

 to ignore and despise science — he will lack the p>ecuUar 

 mental capacit\- to assimilate scientific teaching. Only 

 the few will rise to a proper understanding of the 

 mysteries and be masters of their subjects, though 

 many may be trained to be skilful mechanics. 



The extent to which the multitude can receive in- 

 struction is a matter of primary- importance. If, as 

 Huxley has said, the greatest intellectual revolution 

 mankind has yet seen is now slowly taking place by 

 the agency of science — if she be teaching the world 

 that the ultimate course of appeal is obser\ati6n and 

 experiment, not authority- ; teaching it the value of 

 evidence : then must we strive to teach all, in some 

 measure, what constitutes evidence, what observation 

 and experiment are. 



I believe much can be done in this direction, having 

 made the attempt with hundreds of unwilling students 

 in my time, students of engineering who had not only 

 made up their minds that they were not going to 

 learn chemistry as it was not their subject, but were 

 incapable of ever entering into the spirit of the work — 

 one of my sons was amongst them. At an early 

 period, having realised that it was useless to waste my 

 time and theirs in the struggle, and that it would not 

 help them in the long run, to give them chemical tips 

 which they lacked the sense to appreciate and to 

 apply, I made up my mind, therefore, that it was 

 desirable instead to develop any detective or inventive 

 SfMrit that might be in them, so advised them to read 

 detective stories instead of a text-book and ask them- 

 selves what the stories taught them : how the detec-' 

 tives set to work. Their aittention was secured by 

 urging them also to think what would be their posi- 

 tion, later in life, when they were called upon to act 

 for themselves and to get new knowledge for them- 

 selves, if they had not learnt to think for themselves. 

 W'e have then set them to work to --olve a series of 

 problems in the laboratory.'. The cri:rst, in fact, was 

 a combined laboratory-lecture couise, the lectures 

 being on and always subsequent to the laboratory 

 work. In not a few cases, in after yesirs, when I 

 have met old students, thev have told me spon- 

 taneously that, much as they had objected to the pt^es-- 

 sure put upon them, our insistence on their learning 

 to do something themselves had proved to b^ 6i ex- 

 treme value. Long experience las convmced me that 

 anvone who has once learnt to make simple measure- 



