THE IDEALS OF A SCIENCE SCHOOL 1 



I HAVE chosen, for my farewell address to the 

 Scientific Association, the ideals of a science school, 

 because there is no subject in which greater mis- 

 conceptions exist at the present time. The deluded 

 victims of our curiously archaic system of classical 

 education point to the manifold evils of the world 

 which they have misgoverned and the terrible conse- 

 quences of science under their misdirection as the 

 proof of the superiority of the ancient culture and 

 ideals. I wish to show that the ideals of science, no 

 less than its achievements, compare favourably with 

 their own, and that they must ultimately prevail and 

 permeate the whole university with their spirit, 

 because, like the age in which they have originated, 

 they are creative, insatiable and prospective, whereas 

 the ideals we owe to the age of the revival of learning 

 and the rediscovery of the civilisation of ancient and 

 extinct races are essentially imitative, self-sufficing 

 and retrospective. I would not waste your or my 

 own time with a theme so trite, and which only in 

 academical circles is still actively and bitterly opposed, 

 if I did not believe the time of change is at hand. 

 The old regime in our universities and schools is so 

 discredited that now it is merely carrying on in the 

 interregnum between war and peace. Science for 

 more than a hundred years has had every vested 



1 Farewell Address to the Scientific Association, Aberdeen 

 University, 2oth June 1919. 



181 2 B 



