664 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 
physiology. In the ordinary routine of the physiological laboratory experiments 
involving vivisection are infinitely less numerous and infinitely less exacting than 
experiments that involve no vivisection. Vivisection is, in fact, an infinitesimal 
fraction of experimental physiology, whereas in the minds of many who should 
know better experimental physiology always means vivisection: the two terms 
are taken as synonymous, and an odium that should not have been attached either 
to physiology or to vivisection has been directed through vivisection upon the 
whole of physiology. Yet do not mistake my meaning. I do not for one moment 
surrender the claim that upon ethical and utilitarian grounds vivisection is lawful ; 
I deprecate the perverted picture of vivisection that is presented to public opinion 
by sensational agitators and the perverted notion of physiology that is one of the 
evil results of the anti-vivisection crusade. But I do not desire to dwell on the 
vivisection question; I do not consider that it can be usefully considered by the 
general public without an intimate knowledge of the subject, itself possible only to 
the specialist. An ordinary normal person who should say he approved of vivi- 
section would be, in my opinion, even more objectionable than an ordinary normal 
person who should express a detestation of vivisection, for the bare idea of vivi- 
section is repugnant to every humane person. To bring dispassionate argument 
against such natural repugnance seems to me hardly less mischievous than to fan 
repugnance into hatred by passionate appeals to the imagination. The surgeon 
to whom an ignorant crowd should impute cruelty would fail to serve the cause of 
ee by the technical descriptions to them of the operations he is required to 
erform. 
: There are two great principles involved in the welfare of any applied science— 
in the welfare indeed of any living thing—the conservative principle and the pro- 
gressive principle, 
Any organised living mass—let it be an animal or an organised body of men— 
by virtue of the conservative principle of heredity, of repetition of like by like, of 
imitation of action that has proved to be successful, works more economically than 
it could have done if each individual mass had perforce to work out its own salva- 
tion, evolve for itself its own suitability to and temporary mastership of surround- 
ing circumstances. 
But the child that can only imitate and repeat the actions of its ancestors 
brings no positive addition to the excellence of the race whose upward progress 
requires to be fed by the costly process of initiative efforts, by the sports of 
talent and of genius, by the cumulative effect of innumerable hits among innumer- 
able misses of innumerable multitudes of individuals. 
Transfer this thought to education—to medical education in particular. An 
educated person—a competent physician or surgeon—must in the first place learn» 
at the feet of his masters, believe and learn what he is told, imitate what he sees 
done by his instructors, be the apprentice and follower of the experienced craftsman 
who shows him tried and approved ways of working. 
But the apprentice who is to contribute to the commonwealth of knowledge 
and power has to be something more than the faithful imitator of his teacher; he 
must initiate, and he must make a hit among, it may be, his many misses. He 
will then have contributed to the advancement of knowledge and power. 
In all provinces of human activity we may distinguish the result of our two 
complementary principles—imitation, the conservative principle; initiation, the 
progressive principle. But while in all provinces the conservative factor, being, 
so to speak, the means of wholesale economy, bulks the larger, the progressive 
factor, as the means of retail economy, is relatively insignificant. 
Between the two extremes—imitation on the one hand, initiation on the other 
—there is room for numberless variations; and, by reason of the vastness of area of 
even the minutest province of human activity, the aim of education even the most 
technical is perforce more and more directed to teach the pupil to use his own 
mind in presence of the task set him rather than to copy minutely and to 
reproduce perfectly the model facts shown or described to him by the master. 
But in every province, and in particular in that of education, the power of 
imitation is easier to exert and easier to develop than the power of initiation 
