;6o 



NATURE 



[December 14, 1899 



of success which is common to them all, — the possession of 

 the power of foreseeing ; and there is one method of acquiring 

 foresight, — the making of knowledge for ourselves from our 

 own experience. 



If this be so, it is obvious that this power of knowledge- 

 making should be raised to as high a pitch of efficiency as 

 possible before we enter upon the active work of life. Its 

 growth, like that of all intellectual faculties, is slow ; and the 

 facility of its initial cultivation diminishes with advancing 

 years. It is hazardous, therefore, to postpone its cultivation 

 until we are face to face with the problems of life, or even 

 until we enter upon the special study of the main work of life 

 in the technical or professional school. It should be cultivated, 

 and cultivated with especial care, during the whole period of 

 tutelage, whether it be spent at the school only or in part in a 

 department of liberal training of the college. And in order 

 that it may be cultivated, it must be kept in continual 

 exercise. 



I do not know that provision for the exercise of this faculty 

 has ever been generally made, with full consciousness, in either 

 school or college ; but it can readily be shown that it was 

 given far more exercise in the educational institutions of two 

 or three generations ago, than it is in general in those of the 

 present day. 



The curriculum of the old schools, which is also that of the 

 old-fashioned conservative school of our time, consisted largely 

 of classics and mathematical science (including natural philos- 

 ophy), its backbone being the study of classics ; and while 

 the study of mathematics, though an admirable discipline, is 

 for the most part deductive in character, and thus gives only a 

 limited exercise to the power under consideration, the study 

 of languige, and especially the study of Latin and Greek, gives 

 it very abundant exercise. Even if the study of a language is 

 carried out with the aid of a grammar and a lexicon, i.e. with 

 frequent appeal to authority, it involves continual putting 

 together of instances of the usage of words and phrases which 

 have come to our notice, formation of hypotheses as to their 

 usage, and repeated modification of such hypotheses, after they 

 have been brought to the touchstone of experience. The 

 lexicon, especially the lexicon of the old school, would give 

 little more than a clue in many cases to the English equivalents 

 of say, Latin words, the exact equivalents, whether words or 

 phrases, being determinable only by a study of the context and 

 a fruitful drawing upon experience. And when we think how 

 large is the number of words and phrases and constructions, 

 of the usage of which the student of a language is gradually 

 forming more and more accurate conceptions, we see at once 

 how abundant is the exercise which this study provides of the 

 putting of that and that together. The material on which the 

 knowledge- making power is thus exercised, is of course of one 

 kind, and therefore in general of a kind quite different from the 

 material on which it must be exercised in after life. The 

 exercise afforded is thus one-sided and by no means complete. 

 But it is nevertheless exercise of the same intellectual power 

 which we must later on apply to the more varied and complex 

 material which life will afford. 



While the study of the classics gave the student under the 

 old regime considerable experience in the making of knowledge, 

 the curriculum as a whole gave him both the key to his own 

 literature and the literatures of Greece and Rome, and an intro- 

 duction to the principles of the systems of knowledge which 

 existed at the time. His stock of information we should now 

 consider small ; but it bore a great ratio to the whole body of 

 available information. And it should be noted that such 

 knowledge as the student had acquired, had been acquired in a 

 leisurely, thoughtful way, and largely by his own effort, and 

 would thus have become a permanent possession. 



The men of the schools, therefore, in those days, had acquired, 

 besides facility of access to the great storehouses of human 

 wisdom, two things of direct importance for success in the work 

 of life — an outfit of knowledge and the power of adding to it 

 from their own experience. They were consequently men of 

 power, and were recognised as such. And as it was the know- 

 ledge they possessed that was the only readily recognisable part 

 of their outfit, their knowledge came naturally to be regarded 

 as the secret of their power. 



It appears to be Bacon to whom the credit belongs, of having 

 coined the aphorism : " Knowledge is power." If so, to Bacon 

 also must attach the opprobrium of having perpetuated a false 

 and vicious generalisation. However important knowledge 



NO. 1572, VOL. 61] 



may be, it is not the essential condition of power. It is only 

 one of the conditions. A second, perhaps the first, is the 

 ability to make knowledge, which may be developed in the 

 acquisition of knowledge, but also may not. No knowledge, 

 no power : would have been sound doctrine ; Knowledge is 

 power : was false doctrine. 



And while the possession of knowledge is essential to power, 

 it is not the possession of an outfit of knowledge at the 

 beginning of active life that is essential, but the possession of 

 such outfit when it is wanted. In the old days the world's 

 whole stock of knowledge was so comparatively small, that it 

 was possible in the period of tutelage to get an outfit of its 

 principles at least. At the present day the world's stock is so 

 large, that the school and college can no longer furnish a 

 corresponding outfit. Yet the men of the present day are at 

 little disadvantage on that account. For as the volume of 

 knowledge has increased, its accessibility has increased also. 

 And thus, provided the student of to-day has been trained to 

 acquire knowledge, has been taught, in fact, the most important 

 of the three R's, the art of reading, with all that the art of read- 

 ing involves, he can readily provide himself at any time with 

 such information as he may require. Thus, nowadays, it is not 

 so much knowledge that is even one of the conditions of success, 

 as a well developed power of acquiring knowledge. 



It was largely on the basis of Bacon's false generalisation that 

 the fight was waged in later years between classics and the 

 rapidly growing sciences. The advocates of the introduction of 

 science into the curriculum of the school and college, based 

 their demand mainly on the importance for success in life and 

 for general culture, of a knowledge of the laws of natural 

 phenomena. And their opponents, though relying largely on 

 the excellence of the results achieved under the old system, met 

 the utilitarian arguments of men of science by urging various 

 minor utilities involved in the study of Latin and Greek. 

 Neither party seems to have realised, at least fully, the more 

 profound utility which might be involved in both kinds of 

 study. 



Ttie introduction of science into the curriculum under this 

 mistaken conviction could not but have unfortunate results. 

 Its primary effect on the study of classics was to diminish the 

 time devoted to it. But there was a more serious secondary 

 effect ; for, since knowledge was power, and as much know- 

 ledge of Latin and Greek must therefore be acquired, if possible, 

 as before, the student had to be subjected to a forcing process. 

 Helps of all kinds consequently developed a vigorous, nay a 

 rank, growth — elaborate grammars full of detailed information, 

 lexicons giving all the shades of meaning that words might 

 have, annotated texts removing all difficulties from the student's 

 path, even translations, fitly described in college slang as cribs 

 and ponies. Power of translating was acquired by the aid of 

 such educationally illegitimate helps ; but it was acquired to a 

 smaller extent than formerly, by the student's generalising his 

 own experience and to a greater extent by the use of inform- 

 ation derived from authority. The study of the classics con- 

 sequently, first because of the diminution of time, and secondly 

 because the time was no longer so well employed, came to 

 provide a doubly diminished exercise of the knowledge -making 

 power. The command of the classical languages, too, which 

 was thus acquired, became for these reasons a less permanent 

 possession ; and the study of them no longer served to open up 

 to the student, to the extent to which it had previously, the 

 great literatures of the past. 



Nor did the science study itself atone for the deterioration 

 which its introduction involved in the study of classics. I need 

 hardly point out that the method which is used in the making 

 of knowledge in any branch of science, is the same as the 

 method we must apply in making knowledge from the 

 experience of everyday life. Indeed, it gets the name of the 

 scientific method, because, though it had been used by men in 

 all ages in the learning of languages and in learning by 

 experience of all kinds, it was first brought to the notice of 

 logicians by the rapid development of science, which resulted 

 from its systematic application to the study of natural phe- 

 nomena. Any single science, therefore, may be studied as any 

 language may, so as to afford practice in knowledge-making. 

 Language study has the advantage of affording a larger number 

 of simple problems on the material of which the student 

 has the widest experience. A science has the advantage 

 of presenting problems with a greater range of difficulty 

 on a material which is in general more complex. A 



