252 ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ix 



first session is wasted in learning how to learn 

 in familiarising themselves with utterly strange 

 conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and 

 wholly untrained powers of observation and of 

 manipulation. It is difficult to over-estimate the 

 magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in 

 the way of scientific training by the existing 

 system of school education. Not only are men 

 trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what 

 observation means, but the habit of learning from 

 books alone begets a disgust of observation. The 

 book-learned student will rather trust to what he 

 sees in a book than to the witness of his own 

 eyes. 



There is not the least reason why this should 

 be so, and, in fact, when elementary education 

 becomes that which I have assumed it ought to 

 be, this state of things will no longer exist. 

 There is not the slightest difficulty in giving 

 sound elementary instruction in physics, in 

 chemistry, and in the elements of human physio- 

 logy, in ordinary schools. In other words, there 

 is no reason why the student should not come to 

 the medical school, provided with as much know- 

 ledge of these several sciences as he ordinarily 

 picks up in the course of his first year of attend- 

 ance at the medical school. 



I am not saying this without full practical 

 justification for the statement. For the last 

 eighteen years we have had in England a system 



