UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 53 



aminers may be, but I sincerely trust they are not satis- 

 fied with a mere book knowledge of these matters. For 

 my own part, I would not raise a finger, if I could 

 thereby introduce mere book work in science into every 

 Arts curriculum in the country. Let those who want to 

 study books devote themselves to Literature, in which 

 we have the perfection of books, both as to substance 

 and as to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well- 

 known aphorism, I would say that " books are the money 

 of Literature, but only the counters of Science," Science 

 (in the sense in which I now use the term) being the 

 knowledge of fact, of which every verbal description is 

 but an incomplete and symbolic expression. And be 

 assured that no teaching of science is worth anything, 

 as a mental discipline, which is not based upon direct 

 perception of the facts, and practical exercise of the 

 observing and logical faculties upon them. Even in 

 such a simple matter as the mere comprehension of 

 form, ask the most practised and widely informed anato- 

 mist what is the difference between his knowledge of 

 a structure which he has read about, and his knowledge 

 of the same structure when he has seen it for himself ; 

 and he will tell you that the two things are not com- 

 parable the difference is infinite. Thus I am very 

 strongly inclined to agree with some learned school- 

 masters who say that, in their experience, the teaching 

 of science is all waste time. As they teach it, I have 

 no doubt it is. But to teach it otherwise, requires an 

 amount of personal labour and a development of means 



