202 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



when he makes a mistake of that sort as if he were to buy a hat 

 four sizes too small. I agree absolutely about physics. I don't 

 see any good in loading a boy's mind with the minutiae of chem- 

 istry. It is pure memory work and very dry. Some things I 

 would teach carbonic acid, water, air, etc. ; in fact Lloyd Morgan 

 has written a little book called Things around us which strikes 

 me as the kind of thing wanted. But as you say, exact measure- 

 ment is what is required as a training for chemistry. The 

 chemical measurements are as a rule physical, but much more 

 troublesome to understand. The chemistry a boy gets from the 

 Science and Art teaching is really very useless. I often get 

 such pupils and it means beginning from the egg. They have 

 got up a certain number of text-book statements to order and 

 haven't a ghost of a notion what the thing is all about. The 

 only pull they have over the others is that the names are 

 familiar. What is to be the upshot of all this ? I think you 

 are on the right lines ; but are you not beginning at the wrong 

 end? 



I start with the axiom ; no man can be a thoroughly good 

 teacher who is not at the same time a learner ; and in physical 

 science that means an investigator. He is neither interested nor 

 interesting and can't stimulate pupils to the same degree. Now 

 who are the teachers ? Graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, 

 mostly at all events in the larger schools. These people are 

 trained with a view not to be investigators, but as people who can 

 understand and practise a certain examinational system. 



Well I would begin at the top. Make preliminary exams, in 

 science generally the condition of entering a science course at a 

 university, and after one year (say at 18 or 19) finishing the regular 

 examinational part of the course. I would give a degree for 

 investigation. It isn't the originality so much that is required ; 

 it is the training in methods of thought and means of executing 

 and realising ideas. That is what tells in life. It is the man who 

 can improve and invent who should (if he doesn't) come to the 



