PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 665 
which is a rare and costly ingredient, since at any given juncture the odds must 
be heavily in favour of the success of the time-honoured fact or method as com- 
pared with its yet untried competitor. 
There are of necessity many misses and few hits among the novelties that 
come to trial. 
The genius of our nation is admittedly a practical genius that looks upon the 
conservative way as the better way, and makes its changes by as small steps as 
can be from precedent to precedent. This is the safe and easy way, the way of 
nature; and to this predominance of fact copied over fancy realised may fairly be 
ascribed our own prolonged constitutional prosperity. We have found by long 
experience that it is very long odds indeed against any dark horse without a good 
pedigree of precedents, so we prefer to back the field; old methods are the safe 
thing and the good thing. 
But one may have too much of a good thing, and in education I think we 
have had too much of the old methods, in which the keynote is imitation and 
examination of copy, and too little of that expensive and dangerous ingredient—so 
dangerous that to some authorities it appears in the light of a poison—initiative 
and originality of thought. I admit all the danger; I grant to the old authorities 
that there is a good deal of trash current under the label of original research. 
But I do not think we can have wheat without chaff, and Iam convinced that the 
adherents of original research, as against the clientéle of the examiner and of the 
erammer, bring to the educational commonwealth the scanty and much needed 
ingredient of initiative. We want education still further urged in the direction of 
teaching the pupil to use his own mind upon unseen translation of new facts into 
effective conduct, and one of the best ways of obtaining that the teacher shall 
cuide his pupils to use their own minds is that he should himself use his own 
mind, and not suffer himself to drop into the jog-trot of routine. We want our 
teachers to be learned men, but we also want them to continue to be learning 
men; and that is why, in spite of its defects, I want to urge that greater 
encouragement be given to original research. 
I hope I shall not have taxed your patience too far if I bring these considera- 
tions to their natural conclusion by telling you as briefly as may be of an effort 
that is now being made in the University of London to strengthen and organise 
that spirit of initiative which is, I am convinced, of capital importance in all 
teaching, the most elementary no less than the most advanced. We have formed 
ourselyes into a school of physiology, including every teacher of physiology in 
London, each of whom undertakes to give at the headquarters of the University 
lectures upon those portions of the science with which his own previous study has 
rendered him specially conversant. ‘The teaching offered is of an advanced 
character, and is addressed more especially to post-graduate and to Honours 
students; and, in pursuance of the principle that such teaching is the immediate 
consequence of learning, the University has provided a research laboratory in 
which teachers and other post-graduate students find the necessary facilities for 
work. We believe that the experience of the last five years has sufficiently proved 
that a ‘college of learning’ thus constituted renders valuable assistance to the 
teachers and students of the schools of London, and that it is helping to draw to 
a focus resources and efforts that are at present scattered and wasted among the 
several schools. I cannot do better in this connection than quote the words of 
the Chancellor of the University (Lord Rosebery): ‘We hope to make this 
laboratory the central spot for medical research in London .. . an institute of 
studies ancillary to medicine, which may develop and complete the work of the 
University in that direction.” And I think that you will agree with me that 
any movement that contributes to the good health of the University of London 
contributes to the good health of every university in the Empire, and of every 
school whose teachers are animated by the university spirit—the love of learning 
for its own sake as well as for the sake of the mental and material power that is 
required of us, 
