366 ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 



matter as a student can assimilate in the time occupied by 

 its delivery ; and the teacher should always recollect that 

 his business is to feed, and not to cram the intellect. In- 

 deed, I believe that a student who gains from a course of 

 lectures the simple habit of concentrating his attention 

 upon a definitely limited series of facts, until they are 

 thoroughly mastered, has made a step of immeasurable 

 importance. 



But, however good lectures may be, and however ex- 

 tensive the course of reading by which they are followed 

 up, they are but accessories to the great instrument of 

 scientific teaching demonstration. If I insist unweariedly, 

 nay fanatically, upon the importance of physical science as 

 an educational agent, it is because the study of any branch 

 of science, if properly conducted, appears to me to fill up 

 a void left by all other means of education. I have the 

 greatest respect and love for literature ; nothing would 

 grieve me more than to see literary training other than a 

 very prominent branch of education : indeed, I wish that 

 real literary discipline were far more attended to than it 

 is ; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, that there is a 

 vast difference between men who have had a purely literary, 

 and those who have had a sound scientific, training. 



Seeking for the cause of this difference, I imagine I can 

 find it in the fact that, in the world of letters, learning and 

 knowledge are one, and books are the source of both ; 

 whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are 

 distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the 

 source of the latter. 



All that literature has to bestow may be obtained by 

 reading and by practical exercise in writing and in speaking ; 

 but I do not exaggerate when I say, that none of the best 

 gifts of science are to be won by these means. On the 

 contrary, the great benefit which a scientific education 

 bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, is dependent 

 upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought 

 into immediate contact with facts upon the degree to 

 which he learns the habit of appealing directly to Nature, 

 and of acquiring through his senses concrete images of 

 those properties of things, which are, and always will be, 

 but approximately expressed in human language. Our 

 way of looking at Nature, and of speaking about her, varies 

 from year to year ; but a fact once seen, a relation of cause 

 and effect, once demonstratively apprehended, are posses- 



