NATURE 
Wa 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1869 
LECTURES TO WORKING MEN 
HE workmen of England wish for more education. I 
speak of the better classes of them; those who can 
read and write and cast up accounts in some sort of 
fashion, though it may in many cases be a poor one. 
There is a great desire, which is very widely spread 
among them, for some kind of higher education: they 
wish to learn something of Science. They cannot learn 
it at school, and they cannot get all they,want from books; 
so that they must look to a great extent for what they 
require to evening lectures. Now in these there are two 
things which they dread. The first is that they should 
only hear a string of technical terms, which they cannot 
understand ; and the second is that they should have 
what ordinarily go by the name of “ Popular Lectures on 
Science,” lectures which are often illustrated by inconse- 
quent “experiments.” We have not to go far to find the 
reason of their dislike to such lectures: the fact is, they 
distrust them. The English workman is a clear-headed, 
shrewd man, and he has a good intuition of what is 
worth having. That is the reason he cares for scientific 
knowledge. He knows very well that science is “one of 
the best things going;” and he has also a very thorough 
appreciation of everything of the nature of humbug in 
any line whatsoever. Perhaps there is no audience in the 
world who, on the one hand, recognises readily the exist- 
ence of humbug, and, on the other, recognises what is 
genuine, so well as an audience of intelligent English 
working men. I have often conversed with such men, and 
while I have heard them express the greatest desire for 
scientific information, I have heard them also speak most 
disrespectfully of that which is too often presented to 
them instead of it ; and I have, over and over again, heard 
this said, “What is the use of our going to lectures, 
when we are to hear no more of the subject again?” 
Such sentiments as these find practical expression in the 
fact that I have found courses of a few consecutive 
and carefully digested lectures to workmen always well at- 
tended by a persistent audience. It is nothing desultory 
that these men want, but something solid—something 
which will give them real information. What they want 
is not a single lecture, or bits of the thing shown to them 
in a random sort of way, but a piece of real teaching, 
something which helps them to see their way a little through 
some subject, and gives them a better grasp of the thing 
which they are seeking for, namely, the method and facts 
of science. To be told only a number of the facts and 
results of science without the method is what workmen 
do wot want; they are greedy for the facts of science, 
but they want something more. On the other hand, 
to try to impart to them the method of science without 
doing so by some particular instance, is to engage them 
in a kind of vague philosophising, suitable perhaps for 
the learned, but not for the ignorant. Ignorant people do 
not want, and cannot profit by, abstractions. 
I believe, therefore, that a real demand amongst working 
men is supplied by short courses of lectures on scientific 
subjects, given in the evenings in some Institute or Me- 
chanics’ Hall. The lectures should not occur more than 
twice, or perhaps once, a week. We must never forget 
that it is a hard matter for a working man to get 
to a lecture in an evening. To give such a set of 
lectures to working men calls for those who are well 
versed in the subject with which they are to deal ; for 
it is only such who can speak free from technicalities. 
It must be remembered that workmen have no previous 
information, no knowledge of mathematics or of technical 
terms, which may enable us to shorten demonstrations or 
explanations. Everything requires to be explained to them 
ab initio, and it is only a man well versed in the subject 
down to the minutest particulars who can do this well. It 
is only such a man who can bring forward the first rudi- 
ments of a subject shortly, distinctly, and so as to interest 
his audience, w7thout being superficial. Others speak from 
too bare a mind. But a man deeply versed in a subject can 
put it in a perfectly elementary way,and yet weave about 
it the interest of its most advanced portions. We have 
to show workmen the main points of an argument ; they 
cannot come to, nor can we afford to give them, thirty or 
forty lectures, as we should do at the University. We 
can only give them three or four, and we must do the 
best we can in these. The best we can do seems to me 
to be this, to choose from the branch of science, which we 
wish to bring before them, some one of its most charac- 
teristic parts ; and, while following out the great steps of 
that particular argument, to so illustrate it as to suggest 
and open up the rest of the subject, at the same time taking 
care to bring all to bear on one thing. A great point 
to aim at is, that all that we speak about should have 
a relation to the subject in hand, and such a relation as 
our audience will easily perceive—that we should not, 
in fact, bring before them isolated facts or theories, but 
always something connected, something logical. This 
indeed is the great end of teaching science : to get people 
into a better style of thinking about things; and this is 
just what, as soon as these men find it, they greedily 
snatch at; for they aim at some knowledge of science 
for a reason which is perhaps not quite clear to their 
own minds; but when they get the thing they want, 
they recognise that it is what they want. 
Our English workmen, in fact, have not quite enough 
logicalness about them. They are apt to be led away by 
wrong arguments, by conclusions which do not quite 
follow from the premises. And, what is more, they (at 
least the best of them) know that quite well. And that 
is just the very point where some instruction in science 
helps them ; where the scientific method—the method of 
getting hold of facts and putting them together, and doing 
so in a strict and careful way—helps people. And this is 
just what the workmen of this country need, and what a 
large number of them feel that they need, and the very 
reason for which they desire scientific knowledge. Now 
where this desire exists, do not let us hear them ask 
for bread and give them a stone. The future of Eng- 
land depends on these men. They are hard-headed, 
honest, straightforward men; and they think a deal; 
and they have got their faults, and not the least of them 
is this fault of being somewhat illogical. I have heard 
both employers and workmen say, “It is because our men 
are too apt to be led away by inconclusive arguments, 
that half the errors which they commit are committed.” 
To any one who has studied the matter of the failure 
of so many workmen’s Benefit Societies, the truth of these 
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