438 Professor W. W. Watts— 



At the present time many educationists are in favour of teaching 

 only the experimental sciences, to the exclusion of those which 

 collect their facts by observation. This attitude may do some good 

 to geology in compelling us to pay more attention to that side of 

 our science which has been better cultivated hitherto in France than 

 in our own country. But whether we think of education as the 

 equipping of a scientific man for his future career or as the training 

 of the mind to encounter the problems of life, we must admit that 

 it would be as wrong to ignore one of the two ways only of 

 collecting fact as it would be to teach deductive reasoning to the 

 exclusion of that by induction. Indeed, this is understating the 

 case, for in the vast majority of the problems which confront us 

 in every-day life the solution can only be reached if an accurate 

 grasp of the facts can be obtained from observation. The training 

 of the mind solely by means of experiments carefully designed to 

 eliminate all confusing and collateral elements savours too much of 

 ' milk for babes ' and too little of ' strong meat for men.' 



Mr. Teall, in his masterly address to the Geological Society in 

 1901, pointed out "that the state of advancement of a science must 

 be measured, not by the number of facts collected, but by the number 

 of facts co-ordinated.^^ Theory, consistent, comprehensive, tested, 

 verified, is the lifeblood of our science as of any other. It is what 

 history is to politics, what morals are to manners, and what faith is 

 to religion. 



It is almost impossible to collect facts at all without carrying 

 a working hypothesis to string them on. It is easy to follow 

 Darwin's advice and speculate freely ; the speculation may be right, 

 and if wrong it will be weeded out by new facts and criticism, while 

 the speculative instinct will suggest others. In hypothesis there 

 will always be an ultimate survival of the fittest. 



And it is not only easy but absolutely necessary, because in 

 geology, more perhaps than in any other science, hypotheses are 

 like steps in a staircase : each one must be mounted before the next 

 one can be reached ; and if you have no intention of coming back 

 again that way, it does not matter if you destroy each step when 

 you have made use of it. Every new hypothesis has something 

 fre?h to teach, and nearly all have some element of untruth to be 

 ultimately eliminated. But each one is a stage, and a necessary 

 stage, in progress. 



In physics and in chemistry the chief difficulties are those which 

 surround the making of experiments. When these have been 

 successfully overcome the right theory follows naturally, and 

 verification is not usually a very lengthy process. In geology, 

 on the other hand, theory is more quickly arrived at from the 

 numerous facts ; but the price is paid in the patience required for 

 testing and the ruthless refusal to strain fact to fit theory. Every 

 hypothesis leads back to facts again and again for verification, 

 extension, and improvement. 



Many of the leading conclusions of our science have not yet 



