ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 371 



Indebted for his best products to her methods. I believe 

 that the greatest intellectual revolution mankind has yet 

 seen is now slowly taking place by her agency. She is 

 teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal 

 is observation and experiment, and not authority ; she 

 is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence ; she is 

 creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable 

 moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the 

 highest possible aim of an intelligent being. 



But of all this your old stereotyped system of education 

 takes no note. Physical science, its methods, its problems, 

 and its difficulties, will meet the poorest boy at every turn, 

 and yet we educate him in such a manner that he shall 

 enter the world as ignorant of the existence of the methods 

 and facts of science as the day he was born. The modern 

 world is full of artillery ; and we turn out our children to 

 do battle in it, equipped with the shield and sword of an 

 ancient gladiator. 



Posterity will cry shame on us if we do not remedy this 

 deplorable state of things. Nay, if we live twenty years 

 longer, our own consciences will cry shame on us. 



It is my firm conviction that the only way 1 to remedy it 

 is, to make the elements of physical science an integral 

 part of primary education. I have endeavoured to show 

 you how that may be done for that branch of science which 

 it is my business to pursue ; and I can but add, that I 

 should look upon the day when every schoolmaster through- 

 out this land was a centre of genuine, however rudimentary, 

 scientific knowledge, as an epoch in the history of the 

 country. 



But let me entreat you to remember my last words. Ad- 

 dressing myself to you, as teachers, I would say, mere book 

 learning in physical science is a sham and a delusion 

 what you teach, unless you wish to be impostors, that you 

 must first know ; and real knowledge in science means 

 personal acquaintance with the facts, be they few or many.* 



* It has been suggested to me that these words may be taken to 

 imply a discouragement on my part of any sort of scientific in- 

 struction which does not give an acquaintance with the facts at first 

 hand. But this is not my meaning. The ideal of scientific teaching 

 is, no doubt, a system by which the scholar sees every fact for himself, 

 and the teacher supplies only the explanations. Circumstances, 

 however, do not often allow of the attainment of that ideal, and we 

 must put up with the next best system one in which the scholar 

 takes a good deal on trust from a teacher, who, knowing the facts 



