436 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 
poor . . . but that does not mean that a university is doing good if it helps 
those who have no special bent for learned pursuits to acquire with heavy labour 
and much assistance just so much as may enable them to pass muster; on the 
contrary, it is doing harm. I would like to invite the attention of all who are 
seriously interested in the country’s welfare to reconsider the present policy 
in the teaching of chemistry; and this applies also to other sciences. For the 
advancement of civilisation, for the increased welfare of the race by the 
technical applications of our science, it is not the indiscriminate teaching of the 
masses and the multiplication of examinations that is wanted, but the training 
of the few, of capable investigators I do not propose necessarily that we should 
interfere with, or much less abandon, much of our present elementary teaching, 
and I know that elementary, largely technical, training in chemistry is needed 
for. medicine and engineering; but I do propose that our first endeavour should 
be to secure under present conditions in the present college or works laboratories, 
or in laboratories to be specially provided, that capable men, of whom we have 
many, should be able to devote themselves to research without the worry of 
teaching and examining or of providing the ways and means of livelihood. There 
is, happily, reason to believe that this vital need is to some extent becoming 
known; for there have been several recent instances where a particular inves- 
tigator has been afforded the means, financially, of prosecuting his particular 
researches in tranquillity. The diversion of endowments to such purposes, instead 
of their going to the foundation of additional school or undergraduate scholar- 
ships, cannot be too highly commended. 
We may learn a lesson which bears on this from that remarkably prolific 
period of our science, the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the 
nineteenth centuries. It was then no easy matter to pass the precincts of a 
chemical laboratory; only the fittest survived the ordeal. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century the traditions of Berthollet and Lavoisier in Paris were 
kept alive by Gay-Lussac; in England those of Cavendish and Priestley by 
Davy; and Berzelius in Sweden worthily maintained the older school of 
Bergmann and Scheele. By a happy fate the interest of Alexander v. Humboldt 
was the means of both Liebig and Dumas being admitted to the intimacy of 
Gay-Lussac; and in Sweden Wohler was fortunate to gain the confidence of 
Berzelius; and in London, Faraday that of Davy. The achievements of these 
men—Liebig, Dumas, Wohler, and Faraday—are part of the history of science. 
To me they contain a lesson, in point, of great importance. The opportunity offered 
them was beset with difficulties. No bribes such as scholars or students expect 
to-day were offered them; they knew no examinations, and their available 
apparatus and laboratory equipment was of the smallest and crudest description ; 
but they were eager students with whom the master was in sympathy, and it is 
common knowledge that they completed the foundations of our science. Now I 
ask, considering the thousands of students whom we teach and examine to-day, 
are we doing as well in the interest of the country as our predecessors a centu>y 
ago? Who can confidently answer in the affirmative? No; whatever else is 
done, the country needs the provision of men whose untrammelled energy should 
be devoted to original chemical research. Even as intellectual discipline the 
value of research is of the highest importance. In his address to the British 
Association at Winnipeg, Professor Sir J. J. Thomson bears testimony to this. 
He says: ‘I have had considerable experience with students beginning research 
in experimental physics, and I have always been struck by the quite remarkable 
improvement in judgment, independence of thought, and maturity produced by 
a year’s research. Research develops qualities that are apt to atrophy when the 
student is preparing for examinations, and, quite apart from the addition of new 
knowledge to our store, is of the greatest importance as a means of education.’ 
And the object and ideal is wrong also in our system of technical training. 
We aim too much at giving elementary instruction to artizans, which, though 
important in itself, can never take the place of the higher education of leaders or 
managers of industrial works. This is different in Germany, where, although 
the training of artizans is by no means neglected, the chief energy is directed to 
the training and teaching of the smaller class of managers. There is, too, in 
Germany a far more intimate relation between academic and industrial work, 
and the leaders in each often interchange posts. In one respect we haye an 
