PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 695 
In order to bring Education within the range of subjects which should occupy 
a place in the work of this Association, our first efforts should be directed towards 
obtaining a sufficient body of information from all available sources, past and 
present, to afford data for the comparisons on which our conclusions may be based. 
One of the five articles of what is known as the Japanese Imperial Oath states, 
‘ Knowledge shall be sought for throughout the whole world, so that the welfare 
of the Empire may be promoted’; and it may certainly be said that, as the 
welfare of our own Empire is largely dependent on educational progress, a wide 
knowledge of matters connected with Education is indispensable, if we are to 
make advances with any feeling of certainty that we are moving on the right 
lines, 
There can be no doubt that of late years we have acquired a mass of valuable 
information on all sorts of educational questions. We are greatly indebted for 
much of our knowledge of what is being done in foreign countries to the Reports 
of different Commissions, and more particularly to those special reports issued from 
the Board of Education, first under the direction of my predecessor in this Chair, 
Professor Sadler, and latterly of his successor at the Board, Dr. Heath. But much 
of the information we have obtained is still awaiting the hand of the scientific 
worker to be properly co-ordinated and arranged. A careful collation of facts is 
indispensable if we are to deduce from them useful principles for our guidance, 
and unfortunately we in this country are too apt to rest content when we have 
provided the machinery for the acquisition of such facts without taking the 
necessary steps to compare, to co-ordinate, and to arrange them on some scientific 
principle for future use. Within the last week or two a Bill has passed through 
several stages in Parliament for requiring Local Authorities to undertake the 
medical inspection of school children, but, unless the medical inspectors through- 
out the country conduct their investigations on certain well considered lines laid 
down for them by some Central Authority, we shall fail to obtain the necessary 
data to enable us to associate educational and physical conditions with a view tc 
the improvement of the training given in our schools.! On the other hand, 
although I personally am sceptical as to the results, we have reason to believe that 
the inquiry recently undertaken into the methods adopted here and elsewhere for 
securing ethical as distinct from specifically religious training will be so con- 
ducted as to give us not only facts, but the means of inferring from those facts 
certain trustworthy conclusions. 
The consideration of Education as a subject capable of scientific investigation 
is complicated by the fact that it necessarily involves a relation—the relation of 
the child or adult to his surroundings. It cannot be adequately considered apart 
from that relation. We may make a study of the conditions of the physical, 
intellectual, and ethical development of the child, but the knowledge so obtained 
is only useful to the educator when considered in connection with his environment 
and future needs, and the means to be adopted to enable him, as he grows in 
physical, intellectual, and moral strength, to obtain a mastery over the things 
external to him, Education must be so directed as to prove the proposition that 
‘ Knowledge is Power.’ It can only be scientitically treated when so considered. 
Education is imperfectly described when regarded as the means of drawing out 
and strengthening a child’s faculties. It is more than this. Any practical 
definition takes into consideration the social and economic conditions in which the 
child is being trained, and the means of developing his faculties with a view to 
the attainment of certain ends. 
It is in Germany that this fact has received the highest recognition and the 
widest application, and for this reason we have been accustomed to look to that 
country for guidance in the organisation of our schools. We have looked to 
Germany because we perceived that some relation had been there established 
! Since this was written the President of the Board of Education kas stated in 
the House of Commons that ‘it was the intention of the Board,if the Bill now 
before Parliament passed, to establish a medical bureau, which would guide and 
advise the local authorities as to the nature of the work they would have to do under 
the Act,’ 
