544 



NATURE 



{Oct. 6, I J 



bringing those natural phenomena whicli have to do witli living 

 things within the all embracing law of evolution, thus making 

 belief in the theory of special creation once for all impossible to 

 the student of nature. 



One may say then that since the publication of the "Origin 

 of Species " evolution has taken its legitimate place as the central 

 doctrine of biology, the key to the infinite number of problems 

 with which the study of animals and plauts brings us face to 

 face. Without evolution these problems are incapable of ex- 

 planation, and any attempt to explain them is little better than a 

 roundabout acknowledgment of ignorance ; but with the doc- 

 trine of descent as a standpoint, problem after problem yields 

 to patient investigation, biology thereby gradually growing into 

 a perfect and harmonious whole, as did astronomy when once 

 the law of universal gravitation was established. 



Not that the real mystery of things is in any way diminished 

 by this, any more than by other great discoveries. As Herbert 

 Spencer finely says : "Positive knowledge does not, and never 

 can, fill the whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost 

 reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question, 

 What lies beyond ? As it is impossible to think of a limit to 

 space, so as to exclude the idea of space lying outside that limit, 

 so we cannot conceive of any explanation profound enough to 

 exclude the question. What is the explanation of that explana- 

 tion ? Regarding science as a gradually increasing sphere, we 

 may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it into 

 wider contact with surrounding nescience." 



But the fact that no explanation of natural phenomena can 

 ever be final has no right to diminiih our profound thankfulness 

 for every proximate explanation which the genius of a Newton, 

 a Dalton, or a Darwin gives us. To the true man of science 

 these explanations come like a revelation, and he feels that his 

 most cherished beliefs, his most ingrained prejudices, must be 

 brought into harmony with the new light that is in him, or be 

 cast aside as no longer tenable. 



A few years ago — even at the time when this University was 

 founded — something more than a bare statement of belief in 

 evolution w ould have been required from a professor of biology 

 giving his inaugural lecture. For then the doctrine of descent 

 was only just emerging from the fiery trial through which all 

 great truths, scientific or otherwise, have to pass, and it was 

 honestly believed by many estimable persons that " Darwinism " 

 was in direct and necessary opposition to religion and morality, 

 and was the secret ally of atheism, socialism, and the like. But, 

 like the fundamental doctrines of astronomy, physics, and 

 geology, evolution has survived all attacks : I believe I am cor- 

 rect in saying that there is now not a single naturalist of any 

 repute, under the age of sixty, who is not also an evolutionist ; 

 indeed, with Louis Agassiz and Von Baer, intelligent opposition 

 to the general doctrine of transformism is practically dead. 



Even among the non-scientific public, opinion has undergone a 

 wonderful and rapid change. An evolutionist is no longer 

 looked upon as a dangerous visionary ; it is no longer thought 

 necessary to hold " that nature's ancient power was lost" when 

 she had to do with living things, and that the power which 

 could form worlds out of a nebula was unable to evolve a horse 

 from a hipparion, or even a speck of living protoplasm from the 

 elements of the primaival sea. 



Under these circumstances it would be superfluous, almost im- 

 pertinent, for me to make any attempt to repeat the arguments 

 which go to show that the animals and ) lants living on the earth 

 at any period of its history are the lineal descendants of those 

 which existed during the preceding period, and that the origin 

 of any living thing by direct creation is, in the first place, 

 entirely unsupported by evidence, and, in the second place, 

 unthinkable. I proceed, therefore, to the main subject of this 

 lectiu'e — the position which biology should occupy in the curri- 

 culum of our schools and of our University ; in other words, its 

 place as one of the natural sciences in a rational scheme of 

 education. 



Educational subjects may be divided into two classes, the 

 directly educational — those which serve as a true discipline, which 

 train the mind, leading to clear thought, accurate reasoning, and 

 a high intellectual tone ; and the indirectly educational, which 

 primarily serve to impart a certain amount of useful information, 

 and only secondarily, by interesting the student and starting him 

 off on a certain track of thought, serve as an actual means of 

 mental culture. Perhaps the best examples of the two classes 

 are furnished by mathematics on the one hand, and on the other 

 by English history as usually taught in schools. A boy who has 



once grasped the idea that two and two make four and can never 

 by any possibility add up anything else, has made a long stride 

 in his educational career ; but the boy who learns that the battle 

 of Hastings was fought in the year lc66, or that Henry VIIl. 

 had six v^ives, has simply gained two comparatively unimportant 

 concrete facts, the possession of thousands of which would never 

 make him anything more than a well-informed person. 



According to the theory of education which was almost uni- 

 versal in the last generation— the English public school system- 

 there were two educational subjects, and two only, Greek and 

 Latin, perhaps with " a shadowy third " in the shape of mathe- 

 matics, but certainly nothing further than that. As a natural 

 reaction against this time-honoured method of trimming down all 

 minds to one dead level of scholarly diilness came the modern 

 private school system, the principle of which is to try and cram 

 into a boy's head a little of all the subjects of which it is sup- 

 posed he cught to know something when he arrives at man's 

 estate — divinity, Latin and Greek, modern languages, mathe- 

 m.itics, natural science, history, geography, drawing, music, and 

 even bookkeeping. 1 he wretched child is "everything by starts 

 and nothing long " ; his masters, chosen for knowing something 

 of as many as possible of these subjects, are usually eminently 

 superficial, and he leaves school well informed perhaps, but 

 profoundly and distressingly ill-educated. 



The private school system is now, very naturally, producing in 

 certain quarters a counter-reaction towards the exclusively 

 classical and mathematical method of education, the plea being 

 that the modern plan has been tried and found wanting, that 

 neither natural science nor any of the other recent innovations 

 have any direct educational value whatever-, and that these sub- 

 jects should therefore never form more than a very subordinate 

 part of either a school or a university course. 



This cry for a return to the old paths has lately found expres- 

 sion in an article by Dr. Karl Hillebrand,* who, however, makes 

 certain very important concessions to his opponents. In the 

 first place, what he is fighting against is not so much scientific 

 education — I mean instruction in the natural sciences — as super- 

 ficial education ; and in this every honest teacher of science will 

 be at one with him. Then again he advocates the postponement 

 of the study of Latin grammar — the chief instrument of culture 

 in his eyes — to the age of twelve or thirteen, and the employ- 

 ment of the first three years of high school life to training the 

 powers'of "observation, comparison, memory, and all the ele- 

 mentary functions of the understanding." In this also the advo- 

 cate of science teaching and the opponent of the English public 

 school system in its purity will be altogether in accordance with 

 Dr. Hillebrand. But when he goes on to advocate as the best 

 training for these " elementary functions of the understanding" 

 the learning of texts and dates by rote, and, by way of science, 

 the "simple classifications of zoology and botany," illustrated by 

 the "exhibition" of real animals and plants, one cannot but 

 wish that before jirinting such crudities he had tried to under- 

 stand in what the elementary teaching of science really consists, 

 and how far such teaching would supply the training in observa- 

 tion, comparison, memory, and so forth, to which even he 

 would devote the earlier years of school life. To him, as to 

 many, strict teaching means classical and mathematical teach- 

 ing, and instruction in science is, if educational at all, only 

 indirectly so. 



This opinion as to the educational value of natural science 

 arises, I am inclined to think, from an utter misconception as to 

 w hat is meant by science teaching: by assuming, in fact, that 

 science can be taught by the ordinary educational apparatus of 

 books and lectures. The fallacy of this is only now beginning to 

 be perceived, even by professed teachers of science. It is true 

 that the chemists have long had their laboratories and the 

 human anatomists their dissecting-rooms ; but the notion that no 

 course of lectures on physics, biology, or geology is complete 

 without a corresponding course of practical work, is the product 

 of the last few years, and is even now unrecognised in some 

 British universities arrd in the large majority of schools. 



And yet, one would think, nothing could be more obvious. 

 The whole end and aim of science teaching is to bring the student 

 into direct contact with nature; to insure his knowing, as he 

 knows his multiplication table, the main laws upon which natural 

 phenomena depend, and to make him see, without any possibility 

 of mistake, the relation of those laws to the facts of the universe 

 as he is able to observe them. What would be thought of a 

 mathematical teacher w ho relied entirely on lectures, and never 



* "Half-Culture in Germany,'* Contemporary Review, August, i88o. 



