TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 52S 



see his way out of tae difficulty, and is evidently in a condition of gloomy appre- 

 hension. 



It is, I think, undoubted that science has been neglected in this country, and 

 that we are reaping as we have sowed. The importance of science teaching in 

 secondarjr schools has been overlooked. Those concerned in our industries have 

 not seen the advantage of treating their workshops and manufactories as labora- 

 tories of research. The Government has given too meagre an endowment to 

 scientific institutions, and has faQed to adequately encourage scientific men and to 

 attract a satisfactory quota of the best intellects of the country to the study of 

 science. Moreover, private benefactors have not been so numerous as in some 

 other countries in respect of those departments of scientific work which are either 

 non-utilitarian or not immediately and obviously so. AYe have been lacking alike 

 in science organisation and in eflPective co-operation in work. 



It has been attempted to overcome defects in training for scientific pursuits by 

 the construction of royal roads to scientific knowledge. Engineering students 

 have been urged to forego the study of Euclid, and, as a substitute, to practise 

 drawing triangles and squares ; it has been pointed out to them that mathematical 

 study has but one object, viz., the practical carrying out of mathematical opera- 

 tions ; that a collection of mathematical rules of thumb is what they should aim 

 at ; that a knowledge of the meaning of processes may be left out of account so 

 long as a sufficient grasp of the application of the resulting rules is acquired. In 

 particular, it has been stated that the study of the fundamental principles of the 

 infinitesimal calculus may profitably be deferred indefinitely so long as the student 

 is able to diflerentiate and integrate a few of the simplest functions that are met 

 with in pure and applied physics. The advocates of these views are, to my mind, 

 urging a process of ' cramming ' for the work of life which compares unfavourably 

 with that adopted by the so-called 'crammers' for examinations; the latter I 

 believe to be, as a rule, much maligned individuals, who succeed by good organi- 

 sation, hard work, and personal influence, where the majority of public and private 

 schools fail ; the examinations for which their students compete encourage them 

 to teach their pupils to think, and not to rely principally upon remembering rules. 

 The best objects of education, I believe, are the habits of thought and observation, 

 the teaching of how to think, and the cultivation of the memory ; and examiners 

 of experience are able to a considerable extent to influeuce the teaching in these 

 respects ; they show the teachers the direction in which they should look for 

 success. The result has been that the ' crammer ' for examinations, if he ever 

 existed, has disappeared. But what can be said for the principle of cramming for 

 the work of one's life ? Here an examination would be no check, for examiners 

 imbued with the same notion would be a necessary part of the system ; the 

 awakening of the student would come, perhaps slowly, but none the less 

 inevitably ; he might exist for a while on his formulae and his methods, but with 

 the march of events, resulting in new ideas, new apparatus, new designs, new 

 inventions, new materials requiring the utmost development of the powers of the 

 mind, he will certainly find himself hopelessly at sea and in constant danger of 

 discovering that he is not alone in thinking himself an impostor. And an impostor 

 he will be if he does not by his own assiduity cancel the pernicious effects of the 

 system upon which he has been educated. I do not, I repeat, believe in royal 

 roads, though I appreciate the advantage of easy coaches in kindred sciences. In 

 the science to which a man expects to devote his life, the progress of which he 

 hopes to further, and in which he looks for his life's success, there is no royal road. 

 The neglect of science is not to be remedied by any method so repugnant to the 

 scientific spirit ; we must take the greater, knowing that it includes the less, not 

 the less, hoping that in some happy-go-lucky way the greater will follow. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was possible for most workers to 

 be well acquainted with nearly all important theoi-ies in any division of science ; 

 the number of workers was not great, and the results of their labours were for the 

 most part concentrated in treatises and in a few publications especially devoted to 

 science ; it was comparatively easy to follow what was being done. At the 

 present time the state of afiaiys is different. Thg ni^mber of workers is yery large ; 



