PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 919 



nerve, ■which are easily fatigued and require an abundant blood-supply, are never 

 employed in Nature where bone or tendon will serve. Exercise of the memory 

 involves nervous strain, and after an early age a considerable nervous strain. It 

 is more economical and more business-like to employ mechanical contrivances 

 rather than brain-tissue for such purposes, to leave the vast mass of useful facts in 

 grammars, dictionaries, and text-books, and to collect those for which we have a 

 present use in the notebook or the card-index. There is another appliance which 

 the serious student finds almost as useful as the notebook or the card-index — 

 I mean the waste-paper basket. 



The history of learning warns us that it is not good to lay up in our memories 

 a great store of knowledge whose use lies far in the future. Apply to knowledge 

 what moralists tell us about money. It is only the money that you may expect 

 to put to use within a reasonable time that does you any good, and the same holds 

 true of knowledge. Unused knowledge, like unused money, becomes corrupt. 

 Uncritical, ill-mastered knowledge is at its best a knowledge of useful things, 

 which, as Hazlitt points out,' is not to be confounded with useful knowledge. 



If I felt it necessary to show that all book-learning is not futile, I miglit dwell 

 upon the great subjects of languages and history. But you will gladly allow me 

 to pass on to branches of useful knowledge with which 1 am more familiar. 



Science. 



It is the function of science to produce verifiable knowledge. Science achieved 

 her earliest successes by investigating the simplest properties of tangible things — 

 number, form, uniform motion. Here she learued how to combine the knowledge 

 of many concrete facts into general statements, which (to the confusion of thought) 

 we call scientific laws. Science applies her general statements to new cases, using 

 facts to make general statements, and general statements to discover or verily 

 facts, so that a considerable part of scientific knowledge is in perpetual use. 

 Science is no longer content with the study of simple properties aud tangible 

 things. She will consider facts of every kind as soon as she can find the time. 

 There is no hope of withdrawing from scientific treatment any kind of experience 

 which the human senses or the operations of the huniau m'nd furnish; to be safe 

 from the inroads of science you must betake yourself to some study which does 

 not meddle with facts. 



Generalisation involves incessant reference of effects to their causes. Facts 

 can only be ill-classified and superficially generalised so long as the causes of the 

 facts remain uninvestigated. Science of any good kind sets up, theretore, the 

 habit of methodical inquiry and the habit of reasoning — productive reasoning, we 

 might call it, to distinguish it from the reasoning ot the schools. The best 

 examples of productive reasoning are to be found in the investigations of science, 

 and especially of those experimental sciences which deal with simple tangible 

 objects, whose properties can be studied one at a time. 



The virtues of science are exactness, impartialit}', candour. Scientific impar- 

 tiality means the determination to accept no authority as binding except the assent 

 of all competent persons. Scientific candour means perpetual readiness to revise 

 opinions which are held in respect. Loyalty, except of one kind, loyalty to 

 herself, science has no use for and does not cultivate. 



I think it is true, but you can judge as well as I, that during the last four cen- 

 turies there has been no generator of useful knowledge at all comparable with 

 science. 



Spencer's Estimate of the Place of Science in Education. 



Herbert Spencer has raised the question : What knowledge is of most worth ? 

 He considers knowledge in its bearing on life and health, on the gaining of a 

 livelihood, on citizenship, on artistic production and enjoyment ; lastly, as a means 

 of discipline. The answer which he gives under each head is ' Science ' ; that is 

 bis verdict on all the counts. A decision so clear, which is, moreover, powerfully 



' Bouiul Table, ' Classical Education,' 



