TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 33 



centage of University students. Excellent lectures are delivered by the Professors 

 to scanty audiences, and the great bulk of those educated at the University receivo 

 no move tincture of science than their predecessors did twenty years ago. 



The recognition of Science among the subjects of University examinations is by 

 no means an unmixed advantage to those concerned. Examinations have played 

 and will continue to play a useful part in directing and stimulating study, and in 

 securing the distribution of rewards according to merit ; but they produce in the 

 student, as has often been pointed out, a habit of looking to success in examination 

 as the end of his studies. This habit of mind is peculiarly alien to the true spirit 

 of scientific work. Only such knowledge is valued as is likely to be producible at 

 the appointed time. Whether a theory is consistent or true is immaterial, provided 

 it is probable — that is to say, advanced by some author whose authority an examiner 

 would recognize. All incidental observations and experimental inquiry lying out- 

 side the regular laboratory course, which are the natural beginnings of original 

 work, must be eschewed as trespassing on the time needed for preparation. The 

 examination comes ; the University career is at an end ; and the student departs, 

 perhaps with a considerable knowledge of scientific facts and theories, but without 

 having experienced the pleasure, still so easily gained in our young science of 

 Chemistry, of adding one new fact to the pile of knowledge, and, it may be, with 

 little more inclination to engage in such pursuit than have most of his contempo- 

 raries to continue the study of Aristotle or Livy. 



However, examinations have their strong side, to which I have referred, as well 

 as their weali side ; and although it is the natural desire of a teacher to see his 

 more promising pupils contributing to the science with whose principles and 

 methods they have laboured to become acquainted, the younger, like the elder, 

 branches of knowledge must be content to serve as instruments for developing men's 

 minds. Chemisti'y can only claim a place in general education if its study serves, 

 not to make men chemists, but to help in making them intelligent and well in- 

 formed. If it is found to serve this purpose well, the number of chemical students 

 at the Universities ought to increase ; and if the number increases, no rigour of the 

 Examination System will prevent one or two, perhaps, in every year adopting 

 Chemistry as the pursuit of their lives. But the Universities have little power to 

 determine what number of students shall follow any particular line of study. With 

 certain reserves in favour of classics and mathematics, their system is that of free 

 trade. Young men of eighteen or nineteen have tastes already formed, some for the 

 studies which were put before them at school (in which, perhaps, they are already 

 proficient and have oeen already successful), some for games and good-fellowship. 

 It is, from the nature of the case, with the masters of schools that the responsibility 

 rests of fixing the position of science in education. During the last ten years 

 provision has been made at most of the larger schools for the teaching of some 

 branches of science ; and those who recall the conservatism of schoolboys, and their 

 consequent prejudice in favour of the older studies, will understand a part of the 

 difficulties which have had to be encountered. The main and insurmountable 

 difficulty is what I may call the impenetrability of studies. A new subject cannot 

 be brought in without displacing in part those to which the school-hoiu-s have been 

 allotted. It is the same difficulty which occurs again and again in human life. 

 There are many things which it would be well to know and well to follow ; but 

 life, like schooltime, is too short for all. From the educational phase of this diffi- 

 culty the natural difference of tastes and aptitudes provides in some degree a way 

 of escape. I think that wherever a school can afford appliances for the teaching 

 of Chemistry, all the boys should pass through the hands of the teacher of this 

 subject. Two or three hoiu-s a week during one school-year would be sufficient to 

 enable the teacher to judge what pupils were most promising. There may be in- 

 stances to the contrary; but I do not think it likely that any boy who attended 

 chemical lectures for a year without becoming interested in the subject would ever 

 pursue it afterwards with success. Suppose that out of one hundred boys who 

 have gone through this course five are selected as having shown more intelligence 

 or interest than the rest; they shoidd be permitted to give a considerable part of 

 their time, while still at school, to studying science, without suffering loss of 

 position in the school or forfeiting the chance of scholarships or prizes. If any 



