VIEWS ON EDUCATION 211 



that senior students gain more good from instruction in advanced 

 subjects by demonstrators than juniors would in elementary 

 subjects. For the senior student makes allowances ; and the 

 keenness and interest of the young instructor awakens his interest. 

 Second, from the teacher's point of view it is always well to be 

 obliged to go back on fundamentals. One is too apt, without 

 the duty of delivering elementary lectures, to take these funda- 

 mentals for granted ; whereas if they are recapitulated every 

 year the light of other knowledge is brought to bear on them 

 and they are given their true proportion; indeed ideas occur 

 which often suggest lines of research. It is really the simplest 

 things which we know of, the atomic theory, the true nature 

 of elasticity, the cause of the ascent of sap in plants, the 

 mechanism of exchange in respiration and digestion ; all these 

 lie at the base of their respective sciences, and all could bear 

 much elucidation. 



I believe therefore that it is conducive to the furtherance of 

 knowledge that an investigator should be entirely engaged in 

 teaching. But he should always keep in view the fact that his 

 pupils should themselves learn how to investigate, and he should 

 endeavour to inculcate that spirit in them. 



It follows that the teachers in the Philosophical Faculty 

 should be selected only from those who are themselves contri- 

 buting to the advancement of knowledge ; for if they have not 

 the spirit of research in them, how shall they instil it into others ? 

 It is our carelessness in this respect (I do not speak of University 

 College, which has always been guided by these principles, but 

 of our country as a whole) which has made us so backward as 

 compared with some other nations. It is this which has made 

 the vast majority of our statesmen so careless, because so 

 ignorant of the whole frame of mind of the philosopher ; and 

 which has made it possible for men high in the political 

 estimation of their countrymen to misconceive the functions 

 of a University." 



