Rayleigh's Address to the British Association. Ill 



part of an undergraduate course. As to the management of such 

 institutions there is room for a healthy difference of opinion. For 

 many kinds of original work, especially in connection with 

 accurate measurement, there is need of expensive apparatus ; and 

 it is often difficult to persuade a student to do his best with 

 imperfect appliances when he knows that by other means a better 

 result could be attained with greater facility. Nevertheless it 

 seems to me important to discourage too great reliance upon the 

 instrument-maker. Much of the best original work has been 

 done with the homeliest appliances ; and the endeavor to turn to 

 the best account the means that may be at hand develops ingenuity 

 and resource more than the most elaborate determinations with 

 ready-made instruments. There is danger otherwise that the 

 experimental education of a plodding student should be too 

 mechanical and artificial, so that he is puzzled by small changes 

 of apparatus, much as many school-boys are puzzled by a transposi- 

 tion of the letters in a diagram of Euclid. 



From the general spread of a more scientific education, we are 

 warranted in expecting important results. Just as there are some 

 brilliant literary men with an inability, or at least a distaste 

 practically amounting to inability, for scientific ideas, so there are 

 a few with scientific tastes whose imaginations are never touched 

 by merely literary studies. To save these from intellectual stagna- 

 tion during several important years of their lives is something 

 gained, but the thorough-going advocates of scientific education 

 aim at much more. To them it appears strange, and almost 

 monstrous, that the dead languages should hold the place they do 

 in general education ; and it can hardly be denied that their 

 supremacy is the result of routine rather than of argument. I do 

 not myself, take up the extreme position. I doubt whether an 

 exclusively scientific training would be satisfactory ; and where 

 there is plenty of time and a literary aptitude I can believe that 

 Latin and Greek may make a good foundation. But it is useless 

 to discuss the question upon the supposition that the majority of 

 boys attain either to a knowledge of the languages or to an 

 appreciation of the writings of the ancient authors. The contrary 

 is notoriously the truth ; and the defenders of the existing system 

 usually take their stand upon the excellence of its discipline. From 

 this point of view there is something to be said. The laziest boy 



