TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 829 
If I endeavour ina few paragraphs to express what, so far as I understand it, 
is the ground of this fear in the minds of some thoughtful objectors, I trust I may 
not be thought to be wasting your time. 
This Section is still in its swaddling-clothes. It has to justify its existence in 
the coming years. It is therefore of moment that it should be started on its 
course of early growth as free as may be from prejudice and with the sympathy 
and support of all who, whatever be their views as humanists or realists, as men 
of letters or men of science, as teachers of religion or men of practical affairs, desire 
to see the education of the young in our country advancing and expanding on the 
best lines. 
On this account the misgivings or warnings of every thoughtful critic deserve 
our attention and may be helpful. 
In what I am saying it will be understood, I hope, that I am not expressing 
views of my own, but endeavouring to act as the recording instrument, a very 
inadequate and old-fashioned instrument, of views which come to me from one 
quarter and another. 
The inclusion of the study of education by the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science among its subjects of investigation is, they say, not alto- 
gether free from risk. 
If you treat education too exclusively according to the analytic naturalistic 
methods of scientific men you incur the danger of unfitting teachers for the best 
part of their work, which depends on the inspiring influence of personal ideals 
breathing through all their lessons, on a vivid sense of the subtle element of per- 
sonality in the pupil, and on their responsible exercise of the power of their own 
personality. 
In giving the scientifically educated teacher the analytic knowledge of the 
dissecting chamber you may possibly rob him of the magnetic power of personal 
sympathy and influence. In this sense, at all events, you must not dehumanise 
him, The most eminent psychologists, the critics tell us, are beginning to recog- 
nise the danger, and they bid the educator beware of science which has a great 
deal to say about mental processes but takes too little account of the emotions 
and the will, and seems inclined to forget that men are personalities and not plants 
or trees or machines, and that boys will be boys. 
The combination of a living and fruitful experience, these critics assert, with 
systematic organised scientific methods and processes is more difficult in educa- 
tion than in any other realm of knowledge, because the data are so complicated 
and so subtle and elusive. 
Hence, they say to me quite frankly, the risk of failure to do much that will 
be of real value in your Educational Section. 
In particular I have the impression that they set no great store by presidential 
addresses, although the address to which you are now listening has at least one 
merit, that it has no claim to be technically scientific, but is wholly based, so far 
as any positive conclusions or recommendations are concerned, on practical 
personal observation and experience. 
This section, say the critics, will do its best work by seeking first of all to 
determine and to set forth: 
(1) What field is to be covered when education is to be treated as a scientific 
study, and what are the limits of the field, taking care to give due regard to 
right ideals of moral and social progress as a primary part of the whole. 
(2) What methods of investigation are appropriate and what are inappropriate 
to the study of education. 
Such are some of the warnings with which we are asked to begin our discus- 
sions. The critics ask the men of science to remember that they are leaving 
their accustomed field of purely natural phenomena, and entering a field of inves- 
tigation which is largely, if not mainly, social, political, religious, moral, and lends 
itself only in a limited degree to those problems which men whose sphere is 
natural science are more accustomed to handle, 
