TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 645 



Fxperiment. 



At the preseut time maliy educationists are in favour of teacliing only tlie 

 experimental sciences to the exclusion of those which collect their facts by obser- 

 vation. This attitude may do some good to Geology in compelling us to pay more 

 attention to that side of our science which has been better cultivated hitherto in 

 France than in our own country. But whether we think of education as the 

 equipping of a scientific man for his future career or as the training of the mind to 

 encounter the problems of life, we must admit that it would be as wrong to ignore 

 one of the only two ways of collecting fact as it would be to teach deductive 

 reasoning to the exclusion of that by induction. Indeed this is understating the 

 case, for in the vast majority of the problems which confront us in everyday life 

 the solution can only be reached if an accurate grasp of the facts can be obtained 

 from observation. The training of the mind solely by means of experiments care- 

 fuU}' designed to eliminate all confusing and collateral elements savours too much 

 of ' milk for babes ' and too little of ' strong meat for men.' 



Theory, 



Mr. Teall in his masterly Address to the Geological Society in 1901 pointed out 

 * that the state of advancement of a science must be measured, not by the number 

 of facts collected, but by the number of facts coordinated.' Theory, consistent, 

 comprehensive, tested, verified, is the life-blood of our science as of every other. It 

 is what history is to politics, what morals are to manners, and what faith is to 

 religion. 



It is almost impossible to collect facts at all without carrying a working 

 hypothesis to string them on. It is easy to follow Darwin's advice and speculate 

 freely ; the speculation may be right, and if wrong it will be weeded out by new 

 facts and criticism, while the speculative instinct will suggest others. la hypo- 

 thesis there will always be an ultimate survival of the fittest. 



And it is not only easy but absolutely necessary, because in Geology, more 

 perhaps than in any other science, hypotheses are like steps in a staircase : each one 

 must be mounted bel'ore the next one can be reached ; and if you have no intention 

 of coming back again that way, it does not matter if you Sestroy each step when 

 you have made use of it. Every new hypothesis has something fresh to teach, 

 and nearly all have some element of untruth to be ultimately eliminated. But 

 each one is a stage, and a necessary stage, in progress. 



In physics and in chemistry the chief difficulties are those which surround the 

 making of experiments. "When these have been successfully overcome the right 

 theoi'y follows naturally, and verification is not usually a very lengthy process. In 

 Geology, on the other hand, theory is more quickly arrived at from the numerous 

 facts ; but the price is paid in the patience required for testing and the ruthless 

 refusal to strain fact to tit theory. Every hypothesis leads back to facts again and 

 again for verification, extension, and improvement. 



Princi2:>les. 



Many of the leading conclusions of our science have not yet become part of the 

 common stock of the knowledge of the world ; indeed they are not even fully 

 realised by many men eminent in their own sciences. The momentum given by 

 Werner and Playfair, Phillips and Jukes, Sedgwick, Darwin, and Lyell, and other 

 pioneers of the fighting science, has died down, and in the interval of hard work, de- 

 tailed observation, minute subdivision, involved classification, and pedantic nomen- 

 clature which has followed, and which I believe to be only the prelude to an epoch 

 of more important generalisation in the immediate future, it has been difficult for 

 an outsider to see the wood for the trees. He has hardly yet realised that facts 

 as vital to the social and economic well-being of the people at large, and conclusions 

 of as great importance in the progress of the science and of as far-reaching conse- 

 quence in the allied sciences, are being wrung from Nature now as in the past. 



