690 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
Obviously this at once introduces the experimental method, since no satisfactory 
progress can be made by mere passive observation. ‘his is the stage we have 
now reached in educational theory. We are passing from an appeal to experience 
to an appeal to experiment. Naturally educational method has always had to 
stand or fall by its results, but in estimating results there has too frequently 
been a confusion between cause and effect. So soon as a conscientious analysis 
of educational problems is attempted there comes the need of experiment. Certain 
questions have arisen demanding a definite answer, and the answers supplied must 
stand the test of practical application, Kducation is, in fact, called upon to 
prophesy, and to stand or fall by the results. Now the method of experiment 
is really a system of tentative prophecy, under rigidly determined conditions. 
We acquire skill in prophesying by a process of trial and error. We become 
prophets by prophesying. From all the knowledge at our disposal we calculate 
that a certain process will give a certain result. We apply the process, and then 
it the result is not what we expected we examine all the conditions, seek out the 
cause of our error, and proceed to another tentative prophecy. By and by we 
acquire the power of prophesying with confidence within certain recognised limits, 
and within those limits we may claim to proceed scientifically. 
But in the evaluating of results that is necessary in this process of training 
in prophecy there is need for some recognised standard. Unless this condition 
be fulfilled there can be no general agreement among investigators. Accordingly 
the first step in raising a study to the scientific level is the establishment of sucn 
a standard. In the study of Education in the past—and it must be admitted that 
the same is true to a large extent at the present—the standard adopted was in 
most cases a subjective one. There is a tendency to have everything determined 
by individual opinion. Certain educational processes are gone through; certain 
results follow in the lives of the educands. The causal relations involved are 
arranged by the individual observer to suit his own views. According to some 
the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton; according to others 
the battle of Colenso was lost there. We have need of some standard that is 
independent of private opinion. 
Obviously the whole question of the relativity of knowledge is here involved. 
The educator is too apt to apply to his own case the Protagorean view, and main- 
tain that ‘man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are, 
and of things that are not, that they are not.’ Into this antique problem we 
need not here enter. There is a sense in which the epigram of Protagoras may 
be justified. Without doubt, for his own practical purposes, the individual 1s 
the measure of his universe of experience. But so far as his universe has to do 
with the universes of others, the individual needs some common standard, some- 
thing outside of himself, something that others besides himself recognise—in 
short, an objective standard. 
‘The matter may be illustrated by what took place in the development of 
certain of the sciences. ‘he secondary qualities involved in the Lockian episte- 
mology—such things as colours, tastes, smells, sounds—lend themselves to a 
subjective standard; but so long as we confine ourselves to a standard of this 
kind we cannot be said to treat such matters scientifically. The individual is 
the sole judge of how a particular sound or colour strikes him, and against his 
decision there is no appeal. But it seems as if we could not have a science of 
sounds or of colours based on this individual judgment. Each observer would 
rely upon his own sensations and would interpret them in his own way. For- 
tunately in the study of physics it was discovered that certain of the conditions 
of sensation are constant. When we get a knowledge of wave-lengths, and the 
laws of refraction and reflection, we have passed from the merely subjective 
sphere, we have an outside standard, we can compare, abstract, and analyse 
independently of the individual. ‘C natural’ has a definite meaning to science, 
even if there were not a single ear that could hear the sound. It is true that, 
in the ultimate resort, we cannot eliminate the individual observer. He is too 
important in ordinary life, and a great deal of the work of science is done after 
all at his address. How red strikes an observer is as important to a scientist 
as is the exact wave-length that is necessary to produce red. The relation 
between a certain wave-length and a certain sensation is complicated by the 
individual peculiarities of the sense organs of the individual concerned. In certain 
respects the science of optics is self-contained, and has a definite objective 
