THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 17 



human needs and with the furthest stretches of thought and imagination, 

 it surely takes on to us the final touch of nobility. 



We must remember also that the road of the student of science is still 

 none too clear. The very methods of teaching science are a constant 

 subject of discussion. I will say no more now than this : that the best 

 methods must take time to elaborate, and cannot be expected to have 

 arrived at their final form. The difficulty is increased by the fact that 

 science itself grows rapidly, and the extent of its application is only now 

 revealing itself. That the knowledge of the immensity of nature and the 

 study of the natural laws have an educative value is well recognised. That 

 science can be used as an educational drill is also known and made use of. 

 But there still remains the human side ; the continuous effect of the 

 growth of knowledge upon thought and enterprise ; the realisation of the 

 immense part that science is playing in modern life and is likely to go 

 on playing. Education by scientific instruction is still apt to lack the 

 comprehension of the human side, without which the classroom is a 

 dull place. 



There are even some who think that science is inhuman. They speak 

 or write as if students of modern science would destroy reverence and 

 faith. I do not know how that can be said of the student who stands daily 

 in the presence of what seems to him to be infinite. Let us look at 

 this point a little more closely. 



The growth of knowledge never makes an old craft seem poor and 

 negligible. On the contrary it often happens that under new light it grows 

 in our interest and respect. Science lives on experiment ; and if a tool 

 or a process has gradually taken shape from the experience of centuries, 

 science seizes on the results as those of an experiment of special value. 

 She is not so foolish as to throw away that in which the slowly gathered 

 wisdom of ages is stored. In this she is a conservative of conservatives. 

 What is true of a tool or process is true also of those formulae in which 

 growing science has tried to describe her discoveries. A new discovery 

 seems at first sight to make an old hypothesis or definition become obsolete. 

 The words cannot be stretched to cover a wider meaning. By no means, 

 however, is that which is old to be thrown away ; it has been the best 

 possible attempt to express what was understood at the time when it 

 was formed. The new is to be preferred for its better ability to contain 

 the results of a wider experience. But in its time it will also be put aside. 

 It is by a series of successive steps that we approach the truth : each 

 step reached with the help of that which preceded it. 



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