30 Canadian Record of Science. 



of a teacher of science he will fail in his efforts to impart 

 true science to his scholars. (3) That without a large 

 amount of dead-work no professional expert can properly 

 serve, much less inform and command, his clients or em- 

 ployers. (4) That nothing but an habitual performance 

 of dead-work can keep the scientific judgment in a safe and 

 sound condition to meet emergencies, or prevent it from 

 falling more or less rapidly into decrepitude ; and (5) That 

 in the case of highly-organized thinkers, disposed or obliged 

 to exercise habitually the creative powers of the imagina- 

 tion, or to exhaust the will-power in frequently recurring 

 decisions of difficult and doubtful questions, dead-work, and 

 plenty of it, is their only salvation ; nay, the most delicious 

 and refreshing recreation ; a panacea for disgust, discour- 

 agement and care; an elixir vitce ; a fountain of perpetual 

 youth." 



In the course of illustrating these propositions, President 

 Lesley insists on the impossibility of delegating dead-work 

 to other men. " The man who cannot himself survey and 

 map his field, measure and draw his sections properly, and 

 perfectly represent with his own pencil the characteristic 

 variations of his fossils forms, has no just right to call him- 

 self an expert geologist. These are the badges of initiation, 

 and the only guarantees which one can offer to the world of 

 science that one is a competent observer and a trustworthy 

 generalizer. Nor has one become a true man of science 

 until he has already clone a vast amount of this dead-work ; 

 nor does one continue in his prime, as a man of science, after 

 he has ceased to bring to this test of his own ability to see, 

 to judge, and to theorize, the working and thinking of other 

 men." Teachers in science have special need to bear this 

 in mind, for learning is not knowledge, but, as Lessing 

 says, our knowledge of the experience of others. " Know- 

 ledge is our own. No man really comprehends what he him- 

 self has not created.- Therefore we know nothing of the 

 universe until wo take it to pieces for inspection and rebuild 

 it for our understanding. Nor can one man do this for an- 

 other : each must do it for himself; and all that one can do 

 to help another is to show him how he himself has morsel- 



