136 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



my birth, was painfully built up by the society into 

 which I intruded, that prevented that catastrophe. 

 If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from 

 the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am 

 not aware that I did anything to deserve those 

 advantages. And, if I possess anjrthing now, it 

 strikes me that, though I may have fairly earned 

 my day's wages for my day's work, and may justly 

 call them my property — yet, without that organiza- 

 tion of society, created out of the toil and blood of 

 long generations before my time, I should probably 

 have had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent 

 hut to call my own ; and even those would be mine 

 only so long as no stranger savage came my way. 



So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, done 

 all these things for me, asks me in turn to do 

 something towards its preservation — even if that 

 something is to contribute to the teaching of other 

 men's children — I really, in spite of all my individua- 

 list learnings, feel rather ashamed to say no. And, 

 if I were not ashamed, I cannot say that I think 

 that society would be dealing unjustly with me in 

 converting the moral obligation into a legal one. 

 There is a manifest unfairness in letting all the 

 burden be borne by the willing horse. 



CCLXXXIV 



It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the 

 fact that efficient teachers of science and of techno- 

 logy are not to be made by the processes in vog^e 

 at ordinary training colleges. The memory loaded 

 with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted — is, in 

 fact, rather worse than useless — in the teacher of 

 scientific subjects. It is absolutely essential that his 

 mind should be full of knowledge and not of mere 

 learning, and that what he knows should have 

 been learned in the laboratory rather than in the 

 library. 



