202 TEACHING OF SCIENCE 



ridiculous beetles. And on the French stage I have 

 seen a botanist treated in the same spirit. 



Positiveness and bumptiousness are also sup- 

 posed to be our attributes. In the *New Republic' 

 the characters said to represent Huxley and 

 Clifford are completely disguised by their pompous 

 pretentiousness. 



It is not difficult to describe the ideals of 

 science, but it is only too easy to fall short of them. 

 It is easy for instance to become a sectarian, to 

 belong to a school, and to be literally incapable of 

 fairness towards the opposition. This was plainly 

 seen at the incoming of evolution, and it was one 

 of the many glories of Sir Charles Lyell that he 

 could accept the 'Origin of Species,' and that, in the 

 words of Hooker, he could under-pin his work with 

 an evolutionary foundation and find his edifice 

 stronger than ever. But we need not consider the 

 battles of giants ; we are much more likely to be 

 concerned with the mentally dwarfed or deformed — 

 with the dangerous man who makes positive state- 

 ments on insufficient data, or suffers from that 

 other vice of not being able to confess ignorance. 

 The only lectures which impressed me, as an under- 

 graduate at Cambridge, were those of the late Sir 

 George Humphry ; and his most striking words 

 were confessions of complete ignorance about 

 many parts of physiology. Here is an instance of 

 an opposite state of things, of a want of courage. 

 An eminent chemist was asked why common salt 

 thrown on the fire gives a blue flame. Now the 

 chemist was a German, and having been brought 

 up in that land of stoves, probably had not per- 



