160 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



between good and bad teaching mainly consists in this, 

 whether the words used are really clothed with a meaning 

 or not." And Mr. Freeman gives a remarkable example 

 of this. He says, when a little girl was asked where Turkey 

 was, she answered that it was in the yard with the other 

 fowls, and that showed she had a definite idea connected 

 with the word Turkey, and was, so far, worthy of praise. 

 I quite agree with that commendation; but what a curious 

 thing it is that one should now find it necessary to urge 

 that this is the be-all and end-all of scientific instruction — • 

 the sine qua non, the absolutely necessary condition, — and 

 yet that it was insisted upon more than two hundred years 

 ago by one of the greatest men science ever possessed in 

 this country, William Harvey. Harvey wrote, or at least 

 published, only two small books, one of which is the well- 

 known treatise on the circulation of the blood. The other 

 the Exercita Hones de Generatione, is less known, but not 

 less remarkable. And not the least valuable part of it is 

 the preface, in which there occurs this passage: "Those 

 who, reading the words of authors, do not form sensible 

 images of the things referred to, obtain no true ideas, but 

 conceive false imaginations and inane phantasms." You 

 see, William Harvey's words are just the same in subst'aTiC'c. 

 as those of Mr. Freeman, only they happen to be rather 

 more than two centuries older. So that what I am now 

 saying has its application elsewhere than in science; but 

 assuredly in science the condition of knowing, of your own 

 knowledge, things which you talk about, is absolutely 

 imperative. 



I remember, in my youth, there we^^e detestable boojvs 

 which ought to have been burned by the hands of the com- 

 mon hangman, for they contained questic is and answere 

 to be learned by heart, of this sort, ''What is a hor. ? The 



