vii SCIENCE ANt) ART AND EDUCATION 167 



whole criticism of life made in maturer years. The study has 

 often, on a mass of boys, a certain influence which, I think, was 

 hardly anticipated, and to which a good deal of value must be 

 attached an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is 

 shown in the increased and increasing respect for precision of 

 statement, and for that form of veracity which consists in the 

 acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real effect to find 

 that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention given 

 to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curious only, 

 soon becomes minute, serious, and practical." 



Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen 

 better words to express in fact, I have, in other 

 words, expressed the same conviction in former 

 days what the influence of scientific teaching, if 

 properly carried out, must be. 



But now comes the question of properly carrying 

 it out, because, when I hear the value of school 

 teaching in physical science disputed, my first im- 

 pulse is to ask the disputer, " What have you 

 known about it ? " and he generally tells me some 

 lamentable case of failure. Then I ask, " What are 

 the circumstances of the case, and how was the 

 teaching carried out ? " I remember, some few 

 years ago, hearing of the head master of a large 

 school, who had expressed great dissatisfaction 

 with the adoption of the teaching of physical 

 science and that after experiment. But the experi- 

 ment consisted in this in asking one of the junior 

 masters in the school to get up science, in order to 

 teach it ; and the young gentleman went away for a 

 year and got up science and taught it. Well, I have 



