134 REPORTS: ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
imply ‘ respect for fact.’ and the pursuit of truth in defiance of 
prejudice? Then it may be maintained that the study of recent history 
offers a field for its exercise at least as favourable as (say) an inquiry 
into the composition of water. 
Matter and Method not separable.-—This paradoxical conclusion 
depends upon the assumption that the method of scientific investi- 
gation can be regarded as separable from the matter, which is not 
correct. In other words, it is not strictly true that scientific method 
is one and the same wherever it is employed. The physical method 
and-the historical method, for example, have common fundamental 
features, but cannot be simply identified the one with the other. In 
short, scientific method is an abstraction which does not exist apart 
from its concrete embodiments; and the person who desires adequate 
knowledge of it must study it in all its ric manifestations. No 
one ought to expect a training in scientific method acquired in one field 
of inquiry to be transferable to—that is, to guarantee competence in— 
e field substantially different from the former. © This conclusion is 
illustrated and supported by many recent experimental investigations. 
For instance, Dr. W. G. Sleight* has shown conclusively that practice 
in one form of memorising (e.g., the reproduction of the substance of 
a passage of prose) produces no general improvement of the memory, 
but may even cause deterioration in the power to memorise material 
of a different kind. Ability acquired in memory-exercises of one type 
is, in fact, transferable to exercises of another type only if the second 
contains special elements that are also characteristic of the former, 
and then only if the learner perceives and deliberately takes advantage 
of the partial identity. Thus a boy trained in memorising series of 
numbers shows an improved power to memorise ‘ nonsense-syllables ’ 
if, and only if, he has recognised that the use of rhythm is an aid to 
the mastery of the material in-both cases. 3 | 
It appears, then, that the training received in a specific course of 
study is an ability acquired in dealing with situations of a certain 
kind, and is of service without the boundaries of the study only in 
situations that can be regarded as substantially identical with those 
within it. Scientific knowledge and scientific method must not, there- 
fore, be thought of as distinct and separable things, but as things 
whose relation is comparable with the relation between a living body 
and its life. Just as the life of a body consists in its growth and activi-~ 
ties, and in nothing else, so the methods of a science are nothing other 
than the ways in which it grows, reaching ever wider and deeper views 
of some aspect or department of nature. The science teacher has not, 
therefore, to adjust or to choose between the claims of knowledge and 
of training, for the two are inseparable. Let him give his pupils 
the knowledge that (in Spencer’s classic phrase) is ‘ of most worth '— 
that is, the knowledge which best expresses the special genius of his 
science—and he may be confident that he is at the same time giving 
them the best training the subject can supply. It need only be added 
_. Dr. Sleight’s book, Zducational Values (Clarendon Press), » gives a 
critical account of all the more important researches on the transference of 
acquired abilities. 
