TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION UL. 617 
technical education and having been associated with the development of one 
of the greatest of our boarding schools (Christ’s Hospital)—I am, of course, 
aware that very great progress has been made and am, in every way, hopeful 
of the future in store for those who are unaffected by present prejudices. In 
my experience, the men to whom the progress has been due have, in all cases, 
been trained in a broader school than that of Oxford; the few escapes 
from Oxford who have been successful reformers have been the exceptions 
which prove the rule, as they have shown themselves to be gifted with practical 
instincts : to such men the Oxford literary training has been of extreme value. 
Oxford will not gain its full value until all types of ability are represented in 
fair proportion by its students, not one almost exclusively. When this step is 
taken, the incubus of the Oxford spirit w ill no longer be upon us: it will then 
be possible for us to regard education as ‘a preparation for life ’"—a formula 
often used but usually honoured, hitherto, in the breach, rarely if ever in the 
observance, in our schools. 
You may remember the words addressed to Kim by that wonderful man the 
Mahbub: ‘Son, I am wearied of that madrissah (school) where they take the 
best years of a man to teach him what he can only Jearn upon the Road.’ This 
is true philosophy—a philosophy that should be noted by the schools, especially 
those here in Australia. 
There must be no misunderstanding. The representatives of literary train- 
ing rely chiefly on a past into which it is well not to look too closely and must 
always work with borrowed capital in the days to come: our side has no distant 
past worth speaking of but is hopeful of a glorious future, in that it will 
always be adding to its knowledge; we desire to do their party all possible 
justice and shall ever be in need of their assistance and more than grateful 
for the service they render us; but it must be war to the knife if they will 
not recognise that, in a progressive age, they cannot lead any longer, that we 
shall decline to put up in future with the conceit and narrowness of outlook of 
the classical scholar. 
The argument I have applied to the teacher is equally applicable to the 
taught—boys and girls, indeed students generally, are of different types: they 
have different orders of ability and cannot be treated as if all were alike. In 
the beginning, we may tempt them with all sorts of scholastic diet but only, 
in the main, in order to discover their aptitudes; when these are found, they 
should be the main line of attack. In saying this, I am not arguing in favour 
of extreme specialisation but against time being wasted in attempting the 
impossible. Some of us can learn. one thing, others another: the schools try to 
force too many into one mould. It is essential that we should try to lay certain 
foundations but useless to proceed when we find that some of them cannot 
be laid. 
This doctrine is applicable especially to the selection of scholars and to the 
training of teachers and of evening-class students. We select our scholars 
almost entirely by literary tests—the result is that we select persons of literary 
aptitude rather than those gifted with practical ability for every kind of service : 
like necessarily breeds like. By insisting on ‘ grouped courses’ we too often 
oblige students to take up subiects which they are incapable of paying attention 
to with profit: most of us, probably, have found out that there are many 
subjects which we simply cannot learn, try as we may. 
Mv own experience has been gained in a wide school. My course of action 
was determined in early days by reading Trench’s ‘Study of Words,’ from 
which I acquired inklings of the art of inquiry and an interest in tracing 
things to their origin. At College, at the end of but a single year’s didactic 
study, it was my great good fortune to be honoured with the confidence of my 
teacher, the discoverer of zinc methyl and the author of the conception of 
valency, who charged me with the solution of a problem: to work out an 
absolute method of determining the organic matter in river and well water. 
Instead of wasting time in merely repeating what others had done, I had to 
help myself in all sorts of ways: the discipline was invaluable. At the end 
of a year and a half, on going to Germany to study, I again came under the 
influence of a man, an individualist of the first water, who encouraged his 
