December 14, 1899] 



NATURE 



16 



proup of sciences has the further advantage over even 

 a group of languages, of affording a greater variety of 

 subject-matter for ihe exercise of the knowledge-making power, 

 and consequently giving the student practice in learning from 

 experience under such different conditions as to fit him more 

 completely for using his experience under the conditions of 

 actual life. 



The combination of linguistic and scientific study, therefore, 

 if both had been conducted by knowledge making methods, 

 might have been expected to produce better results in the culti- 

 vation of the knowledge-making power, than the study of either 

 singly. But under the domination of the conviction that know- 

 ledge is power, science could not be studied in this way. The 

 main object for which it had been introduced into the curriculum 

 was the provision of an outfit of useful information, and the 

 study must be carried on, so as to provide as large an outfit as 

 possible. The obvious means of furnishing this outfit was the 

 synoiitic text-book, an epitome of the latest results in any 

 branch of science ; and all that the student had to do, in order 

 to possess himself of it, was to get up the hook. Clearly with 

 this as his method he could not learn to use his own experience, 

 but must become 



" Deep versed in books and shallow in himself." 



It is true, that when, after a time, the new science study was 

 found to have become a mere getting up of books, the cry of 

 " Back to nature ! " was raised. As Wordsworth put it : 



" Come forth into the light of things, 

 Let Nature be your teacher." 



As a result, experimental demonstrations were tried ; but they 

 were found insufficient. And now laboratory work has been 

 introduced into school and college, and students are made, 

 themselves, to carry out many scientific processes. They are 

 taught to use the balance, to verily Boyle's law, to measure 

 electiic currents, to prepare gases, to analyse solutions, to dis- 

 sect frogs to classify insects, to use the microscope, to hunt out 

 the names of plants. But they are always shown how to do the 

 things lequired of them. And thus, from our present point of 

 view, this mode of coming into the light of things can be of 

 little avail. For while it makes the student's conceptions more 

 vivid and the knowledge acquired more accurate and less 

 transitory, and while it affords subsidiary training, e.g. of the 

 hand and the eye, it gives but little additional opportunity of 

 acquiring power in the making of knowledge. Even such ad- 

 ditional opportunity as was at first afforded, when the student 

 had no book to follow and was thrown to a certain extent upon 

 his own resources, has now been withdrawn. For it was soon 

 perceived that a greater amount of ground could be covered if he 

 spent no lime in working things out for himself. And so the 

 text-book of laboratory work was devised, telling him exactly 

 what to do and exactly how to do it. " Back to nature ! " has 

 thus meant : Back to books I And it could not have been 

 otherwise. For under the conviction that it is knowledge that 

 is power, practice in the putting of that and that together must 

 appear to involve a waste of precious time. 



There is another influence which has tended to strip the study 

 of science of the high educational value which it might pos.sess, 

 viz , the influence of the written examination. Men of know- 

 ledge under the old regime having been found to be men of 

 power, it became desirable that they should be certified by com- 

 petent bodies. The degree and the diploma thus came into 

 prominence ; and the tests applied to candidates for them, when 

 the candidates became numerous, took generally the form of 

 written examinations. Now it is quite possible to test in this 

 way the possession of command over a language, of deductive 

 power in such sur^jects as mathematics or philosophy, and of 

 information on any subject. But it is imposible to test by ex- 

 aminations of this kind, directly, the possession of the know- 

 ledge-making power. The making of knowledge, even in its 

 humbler forms, is a creative process. It occurs only when the 

 flash of imagination lights up the storehouses of experience 

 and reveals the relations of its accumulated observations. And 

 as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so imagination does not 

 become luminous at command. Put even such men as Faraday 

 or Darwin into the examination hall and tell them to spend an 

 hour in exhibiting on paper their ability to find things out for 

 themselves, and they must almost inevitably fail. It would, in 

 f«ict, be no more absurd to ask a poet to exhibit true poetic in- 

 spiration, at a given date, than to ask a knowledge-maker to 

 make knowledge. 



NO. 1572, VOL. 61] 



Ii, therefore, the possession of knowledge-making power is to 

 be tested at all by written examinations, it must be tested in- 

 directly. And in some cases it can. The exercise of this 

 power in the study of a language, besides strengthening the 

 power itself, produces a command of the language which is not 

 otherwise attainable. And consequently it is possible to test 

 the acquisition of this power in linguistic study, indirectly, by a 

 skilful testing of the candidate's command of the language. 

 Its exercise in science study, however, produces in addition to 

 increase of the power itself, nothing but a stock of information, 

 which is much more readily obtainable from books. The 

 acquisition of the knowledgr -making power in science study 

 cannot therefore be even indirectly tested by the written ex- 

 amination. 



Now written examinations, when used either as the only 

 tests, or as the chief tests, for a degree or a certificate, must 

 tend to encourage the acquisition of what they are capable of 

 testing and to discourage the acquisition of what they cannot 

 test. For candidates soon find out what kind of work vsill pay, 

 and they naturally confine themselves to it. Hence if such 

 examinations are used as tests for degrees, while they may 

 encourage the cultivation of the knowledge making power in 

 linguistic study, they must discourage and repress it in the 

 study of science. 



And if this is the effect of written examinations generally, 

 the effect is of course intensified when they are conducted by a 

 central examining body. For the central examiner, who sets a 

 paper for, say, the schools of a district, can obviously find out 

 even less about the knowledge making power of candidates 

 than the examiner who can adapt his paper to the work done 

 in a particular school. Centralised examining has serious 

 evil effects of its own. But apart from such effects, which it 

 would be foreign to my subject to discuss now, it must exert 

 a specially strong influence in repressing the cultivation of 

 the knowledge- making power, and in transforming the student 

 into Pope's 



" bookful blockhead, ignorantly read. 

 With loads of learned lumber in his head." 



A third difficulty with which the sound teaching of science 

 has met, arises from the complex character of its subject-matter. 

 To compare different usages of words, for example, one has 

 but to turn over the leaves of a book ; to compare instances of 

 the occurrence of natural phenomena, the phenomena must be 

 watched for or reproduced under varying conditions. Know- 

 letlge-making, therefore, especially in its early stages, finds 

 more difficult problems in science than in language ; and the 

 young investigator meets with greater hindrances to progress. 

 The early investigators felt this difficulty, and banded themselves 

 together in societies in order to enjoy the suggestions and 

 criticism of their fellows. The science student of course needs 

 the helping hand still more ; and the teacher must be able to 

 give the requisite aid in a judicious way. He must be a 

 knowledge maker himself, must have sufficient experience in 

 the subject he is teaching, and must be largely endowed with 

 tact and common sense. Unfortunately the old curriculum 

 furnished men with practically no experience of science, the 

 new curriculum furnished men with little knowledge-making 

 power, and no curriculum could furnish the tact and common 

 sense. The available teachers have thus in general been in- 

 competent. And in the making of scientific knowledge, a pupil 

 under an incompetent teacher must stick fast. 



Competent teachers in classics, on the other hand, have 

 always been more readily obtainable. And — what is of more 

 importance — in the making of linguistic knowledge, a pupil 

 under an incompetent teacher does not stick fast. He has the 

 experience of his childhood to help him, is capable of exercising 

 the knowledge-making power, without the teacher's aid, on 

 the familiar material which language affords, and in his effort 

 to make progress, cannot help exercising it to a greater or 

 smaller extent. Let me draw special attention to this point ; 

 for the fact that in the study of language, exercise of the 

 knowledge-making power is not only possible, but in a large 

 measure inevitable, even under an incompetent teacher, gives 

 to language study a great advantage over science study, as a 

 means of discipline in all educational institutions, but especially 

 in those of lower grade, in which, owing to their large number, 

 the difficulty of securing competent teachers is especially great. 



The conclusions we have now reached may be summarised 

 thus : — (i) Few of the subjects of the old curriculum could be 

 studied without exercise of the knowledge-making power ; — 



