TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 823 



unsuccessful in the late campaign are currently reported to have gone out to 

 South Africa openly deriding science : it will be well if the lesson taught by 

 their failure be not disregarded by their colleagues. The importance of the part 

 played by theory in science cannot be exaggerated. We have only to think of 

 the influence exercised by the Newtonian theory of Gravitation, by the Daltonian 

 theory of Atoms, by Faraday's conception of Lines of Force, by the Wave theory in 

 its varied applications, by the Darwinian theory of Evolution ; we have only to 

 think of the way in which the reflections of oue weak man indited at his study- 

 table in a secluded Kentish village have changed the tone of thought of the 

 civilised world. Such theories are the very foundations of science : whilst facts 

 are the building stones, theories furnish the design, and it is the interpretation of 

 facts in the light of theory — the considered application of theory to practice — 

 that constitute true science. The marvellous development of scientific activity 

 during the past century has been consequent on the establishment of fruitful 

 theories. If teachers generally would pay more attention to theory, their teaching 

 would doubtless be more fruitful of results : facts they know in plenty but they 

 lack training in the considered use of facts. False prophets among us have long 

 taught the narrow doctrine that practice is superior to theory, and we pretend to 

 believe in it. That the belief is founded on misconception may safely be contended, 

 however : the two go together and are inseparable. It is true that we have 

 enjoyed the reputation of being a practical people, and have been accustomed to 

 take no little pride in the circumstances, to scoff' somewhat at theory: but 

 behind our practice in the past there was a large measure of imaginative power, 

 of theoretical insight ; in fact, we were successful because we were innately 

 possessed of considerable power of overseeing difficulties, of grasping an issue, of 

 brushing aside unessential details and going straight to the point : in other words, 

 of being practical. We are ceasing to be practical because modern practice is 

 based on a larger measure of theory and our schools are paying no proper 

 "attention to the development of imaginative power or to giving training in the 

 use of theory as the interpreter of facts : didactic and dogmatic teaching are pro- 

 ducing the result which infallibly follows in their wake : sterility of intellect. 



Mr. Francis Darwin, in his Keminiscences of his father, tells us that ' he often 

 said that no one could be a good observer unless he was an active theoriser.' And 

 he goes on to say : ' This brings me back to what I said about his instinct for 

 arresting exceptions: it was as though he were charged with theorising power ready 

 to flow into any channel on the slightest disturbance, so that no fact, however 

 small, could avoid releasing a stream of theory, and thus the fact became magnified 

 into importance. In this way it naturally happened that many untenable theories 

 occurred to him ; but fortunately his richness of imagination was equalled by his 

 power of judging and condensing the thoughts that occurred to him. He was 

 just to his theories and did not condemn them unheard ; and so it happened that 

 he was willing to test what would seem to most people not at all worth testing.' 



In his Autobiography Darwin remarks : — ' I have steadily endeavoured to 

 keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved {a^id I 

 cannot resist forminc/ one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed 

 to it.' The italics in these passages are mine. 



Our system of education has no proper theoretical basis. Educators have 

 ceased to be practical because they have failed to keep pace with the march of 

 discovery, the theoretical basis underlying their profession having been enlarged 

 so rapidly and to such an extent that it is beyond their power to grasp its 

 problems. The priesthood of the craft are, in fact, possessed by the spirit of 

 narrow parochialism : they are upholders of an all too rigid creed, being lineal 

 descendants of a privileged class — ' the knowledge caste,' to use Thring's expres- 

 sion- — whose functions were far more limited than are those which must now be 

 discharged by teachers if teaching is to be given which will serve as an efficient 

 preparation for life under modern conditions. They enlarge ad nauseam on the 

 superiority of literary and especially of classical training, forgetting that their 

 preference for classics is but the survival of a practice and that their arguments in 

 defence of a literary system are but preconceived opinions. Being incapable ot 



