XI INSTRUCTION IN PHYSIOLOGY 299 



lungs, or eye, must not be confounded with those 

 of a man ; but, so far as the comprehension of the 

 elementary facts of the physiology of circulation, 

 of respiration, and of vision goes, the one fur- 

 nishes the needful anatomical data as well as the 

 other. 



Thus, it is quite possible to give instruction in 

 elementary physiology in such a manner as, not 

 only to confer knowledge, which, for the reason I 

 have mentioned, is useful in itself; but to serve 

 the purposes of a training in accurate observation, 

 and in the methods of reasoning of physical 

 science. But that is an advantage which I 

 mention only incidentally, as the present Confer- 

 ence does not deal with education in the ordinary 

 sense of the word. 



It will not be suspected that I wish to make 

 physiologists of all the world. It would be as 

 reasonable to accuse an advocate of the " three 

 R's " of a desire to make an orator, an author, and 

 a mathematician of everybody. A stumbling 

 reader, a pot-hook writer, and an arithmetician 

 who has not got beyond the rule of three, is not a 

 person of brilliant acquirements ; but the differ- 

 ence between such a member of society and one 

 who can neither read, write, nor cipher is almost 

 inexpressible ; and no one nowadays doubts the 

 value of instruction, even if it goes no farther. 



The saying that a little knowledge is a danger- 

 ous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage, 



