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the teacher not to spoil the spirit of inquiry by allowing it to run riot, nor to 

 stifle it by making the work uninteresting ; if the lesson interests them, their 

 inquisitive minds will be quick enough to assimilate the teaching. We are, in fact, 

 brought back to what I have already emphasised— that the real difference between 

 the inquisitive mind of the child and the inquiring mind of the adult is that the 

 former is yearning for information quite regardless of what it may lead to, 

 whereas the latter must learn or investigate with an object if the interest is to 

 be excited and maintained. 



I have often thought it an interesting parallel that among original investigators 

 and researchers there are two quite distinct types of mind, which have achieved 

 equally valuable results. There is the researcher who pursues an investigation with 

 a constant purpose and to whom the purpose is the inspiration. But there is also 

 the investigator who has preserved his youthful enthusiasm for novelty and has 

 in some respects the mind of a child ; passionately inquisitive, he will always 

 seek to do something new, and very often, like a child, he will tire of a line of 

 research in which he has made a discovery, and take up with equal enthusiasm 

 a totally different problem in the hope of achieving new conquests. I think that 

 a man well known in Sheffield, the late Henry Clifton Sorby, must have been 

 a man of this character. The latter is, perhaps, the most fertile type of original 

 investigator, but it is not the type that produces the best teacher, except for very 

 exceptional and original-minded students; and such teachers do not often found 

 a school of learning and research endowed with much stability. For ordinary 

 students the investigator who pursues his researches as far as possible to their 

 conclusion is the safer guide. 



It seems to me suggestive that there are to be found, even amongst the 

 famous researchers, these two types of mind, that somewhat correspond to the 

 mental attitude of the school pupil and the University student. It is as though 

 these great men have preserved a juvenile spirit, some from the days of their 

 childhood, others from early manhood. 



It will now be clear that the principle which I am advocating is a very simple 

 one, namely, that the business of direct mental training should be finished at 

 school, and that at the University the trained mind should be given material upon 

 which to do responsible work in the spirit of inquiry. Preparatory exercises 

 belong to school life and should be abandoned at the University. 



All this seems so obvious that it might appear to be hardly worth saying 

 were it not that the methods which actually prevail are so far removed from this 

 ideal. 



When, for example, a boy who has not learnt Greek or chemistry at school 

 comes to the University and proposes to take up one of these subjects he is 

 generally put through a course of exercises which differ in no essential respect from 

 those which are set before a boy of twelve. In other words, our University 

 method for the trained mind does not really differ from our school method, which 

 is supposed to be adapted to the mind in course of training. Again, boys who 

 have been learning certain subjects for yearn at school, but are weak in them, 

 have their education continued at tho University in the same subjects by the 

 eame school methods until they can be brought up to the requirements of a first 

 University examination, which in its character does not differ much from the 

 examinations held at school. Where in this process is to be found the intro- 

 duction of that spirit of inquiry and investigation which ought to characterise 

 the University course? 



It may be asked, In what manner is this change to be introduced, and how is it 

 possible under present conditions, where so many students are all pursuing ordinary 

 degree courses and have no time or opportunity for special work, to provide 

 teachers who can educate them in this spirit, if it is also their duty to get pass 

 students through their examinations ? The answer, I think, is that in a University 

 the professors and higher teachers should be, without exception, men who, what- 

 ever may be their teaching duties, are also actively engaged in investigation. 

 Their assistants should be teachers who, even if the whole or part of their time 

 is occupied in routine teaching, have yet had some experience in, and possess 

 real sympathy with, modern advanced work under such professors. This is 

 only to be secured by insisting that teachers in a University should all have had 

 some experience of original work, and, just as one of the necessary qualifications 



