NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 125 



knowledge and practical discipline. If scientific education 

 is to be dealt with as mere bookwork, it will be better not to 

 attempt it, but to stick to the Latin Grammar which makes 

 no pretence to be anything but bookwork. 



If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is 

 essential that such training should be real: that is to say, 

 that the mind of the scholar should be brought into direct 

 relation with fact, that he should not merely be told a thing, 

 but made to see by the use of his own intellect and ability 

 that the thing is so and not otherwise. The great peculiarity 

 of scientific training, that in virtue of which it cannot be 

 replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing 

 of the mind directly into contact with fact, and practising 

 the intellect in the completest form of induction; that is to 

 say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made 

 known by immediate observation of Nature. 



The other studies which enter into ordinary education 

 do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical 

 training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician 

 starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which 

 is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest 

 of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The 

 teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, 

 is of the same general nature, — authority and tradition 

 furnish the data, and the mental operations of the scholar 

 are deductive. 



Again: if history be the subject of study, the facts are still 

 taken upon the evidence of tradition and authority. You 

 cannot make a boy see the b'attle of Thermopylae for him- 

 self, or know, of his own knowledge, that Cromwell bnce 

 ruled England. There is no getting into direct contact with 

 natural fact by this road; there is no dispensing with author- 

 ity, but rather a resting upon it. 



