618 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
students to think for themselves and do things themselves: he was an arch 
heretic himself and we disputed with him-constantly.? 
When I began to teach, the formal methods in vogue appeared to me unsatis- 
factory. At first I had to instruct medical students. Then, in 1879, Professor 
Ayrton and I became associated with the movement to give technical education, 
in both day and evening classes, started by the City and Guilds Institute. At 
first we were in temporary quarters; then the Finsbury Technical College was 
erected—mainly from our designs. Together with Professor Perry, we there 
developed complete courses of instruction for day engineering students of differ- 
ent types. In 1884 we were transferred to the Central Technical College, 
South Kensington, where again, in conjunction with our colleagues, Professors 
Henrici and Unwin, Professor Ayrton and I devised complete courses for 
engineering students but of a higher grade than at Finsbury.” Both colleges were 
* Those were halcyon times, before the rot had set in which has rendered 
modern German scientific training a discipline so inferior to that imparted 
while the high ideals set by Liebig and Bunsen were alone operative : money- 
making was not yet the object; in fact, the Alizarin patent was only taken out 
at that time and the Salicylic acid patent a few years afterwards; specialisation 
was unknown : every student was working at a different problem and everyone 
knew what everyone else was doing—we constantly discussed our doings together. 
In later years, each laboratory has had its special subject and the students 
working with this or that member of the staff, as a rule, have been pledged to 
secrecy, in case their results might turn out to be of practical value and 
patentable. The peculiar growth of a new school, that of Physical Chemistry, 
has also contributed in an unfortunate degree to a change in attitude, the 
more as it has been pledged to one particular creed. 
Mainly through the remarkable influence exercised by Ostwald, an escape 
from the artistic-literary party, whose voluminous and eloquent writings have 
had a great vogue, highly speculative doctrine has been put before students not 
tentatively and argumentatively but as absolute truth: religious doctrine has 
rarely been professed with greater fervour or with less regard to logic. Workers 
in this field have not only been neglectful of the organic side of chemistry 
and altogether lacking in breadth of appreciation but what is even worse—their 
fingers have not been cultivated. 
The two influences combined have deprived the German chemical school of 
salient features to which formerly it owed its pre-eminence. Fortunately, 
perhaps, we have not been successfu! on the commercial side but far too many 
of us have fallen victims to ionomania and the disease has had dire effects, 
particularly in biological circles: the text-books are so full of it that the 
infection will not easily be rooted out. 
In recent years several admirable books have been written on the ‘ pay your 
money and take your choice’ principle, in which the views advocated by 
A, B, &c., are set down. In discussing these with friends I have been nearly 
always told : ‘Oh, but you must give students some positive belief.’ To me it 
seems that unless the reasons can be stated and their sufficiency considered, we 
are not teaching anything worthy to be termed Science and in no way pro- 
moting the intellectual revolution contemplated by Huxley. 
* As pieces of original pioneering research work in education, that done at 
the two colleges has been of great importance; invaluable experience has been 
gained—yet no one has asked to have the work fully recorded and discussed. 
As is our English habit, having made an experiment successfully, we put our 
experience aside and start afresh on a new tack: after being a phenomenal 
success, at the end of twenty-five years, our system has been abolished at 
Kensington and a return made to easy conventional ways. New forces are in 
operation ; the last thing we English can contemplate is collective and continuous 
action. 
To pass from small things to great, we once had a Science and Art Depart- 
ment : it was brought into being, with the assistance of Prince Albert, by the 
late Lord Playfair, who did everything possible, throughout his life, to secure 
its efficiency; Huxley, Sir John Donnelly and Sir William Abney raised it to a 
high level ; now it is all but abandoned. 
Once, in early years, the School Board for London had on its Council a man 
