June 25, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



931 



ities. It is useless to attempt to teach all in 

 the same way, and many can learn only 

 very little. 



The explanation of Huxley's failure to 

 forecast the future of science lies, appar- 

 ently, in the fact that men generally are not 

 attuned to her ways. I am inclined to 

 think that the "mere man of letters" will 

 continue to ignore and despise science — he 

 will lack the peculiar mental capacity to 

 assimilate scientific teaching. Only the 

 few will rise to a proper understanding of 

 the mysteries and be masters of their sub- 

 jects, though many may be trained to be 

 skilful mechanics. 



The extent to which the multitude can 

 receive instruction is a matter of primary 

 importance. If, as Huxley has said, the 

 greatest intellectual revolution mankind 

 has yet seen is now slowly taking place by 

 the agency of science — if she be teaching 

 the world that the ultimate course of appeal 

 is observation and experiment, not author- 

 ity ; teaching it the value of evidence : then 

 must we strive to teach all, in some meas- 

 ure, what constitutes evidence, what ob- 

 servation and experiment are. 



I believe much can be done in this direc- 

 tion, having made the attempt with hun- 

 dreds of unwilling students in my time, 

 students of engineering who had not only 

 made up their minds that they were not 

 going to learn chemistry as it was not their 

 subject, but were incapable of ever entering 

 into the spirit of the work — one of my sons 

 was amongst them. At an early period, 

 having realized that it was useless to waste 

 my time and theirs in the struggle, and 

 that it would not help them in the long run, 

 to give them chemical tips which they lacked 

 the sense to appreciate and to apply, I 

 made up my mind, therefore, that it was 

 desirable instead to develop any detective 

 or inventive spirit that might be in them, 

 so advised them to read detective stories 



instead of a text-book and ask themselves 

 what the stories taught them : how the detec- 

 tives set to work. Their attention was 

 secured by urging them also to think what 

 would be their position, later in life, when 

 they were called upon to act for themselves 

 and to get new knowledge for themselves, 

 if they had not learned to think for them- 

 selves. We have then set them to work to 

 solve a series of problems in the laboratory. 

 The course, in fact, was a combined labo- 

 ratory-lecture course, the lectures being on 

 and always subsequent to the laboratory 

 work. In not a few cases, in after years, 

 when I have met old students, they have 

 told me spontaneously that, much as they 

 had objected to the pressure put upon them,, 

 our insistence on their learning to do some- 

 thing themselves had proved to be of ex- 

 treme value. Long experience has con- 

 vinced me that any one who has once 

 learned to make simple measurements and 

 observations and to ask and answer a defi- 

 nite question experimentally is on a differ- 

 ent mental and moral plane from that occu- 

 pied by those who have had no such 

 training. 



Such teaching is possible even in ele- 

 mentary schools — given competent teach- 

 ers; but a new race of teachers will be re- 

 f|uired to carry the work into effect, should 

 it be decided to make the attempt at all 

 generally. 



The great mistake that has been made 

 hitherto is that of attempting to teach the 

 elements of this or that special branch of 

 science : what we should seek to do is to im- 

 part the elements of scientific method and 

 inculcate wisdom, so choosing the material 

 studied as to develop an intelligent appre- 

 ciation of what is going on in the world. 

 It must be made clear in every possible 

 way, that science is not a mere body of doc- 

 trine, but a method : that its one aim is the 

 pursuit of truth. 



