Foster: Integration in Science. 221 
are led, whichever of the two be our motive, to consider a 
hoological problem from points of view which are at once 
_ morphological att aaa So and further, we are bid to 
pass beyond the museum an e laboratory, even though we 
may make full use of all that can be learned there, and go out 
into the field and watch Nature at work in her own way. . It. 
is not the least of the results of the direction which the Mino 
of natural selection has given to biologic study, that it has led 
the biologist back to his earlier methods, and bid him scrutinise 
with care the ways of living things, how they tell upon and are 
told upon by the world around them. The outcome of the 
eepest, most far-reaching biologic inquiry has been the rehabi- 
litation of the naturalist of old. 
On the whole, then, we need not despond.. We may boldly 
. encourage the divergences of modern study in the sure hope 
that union will come in the end. We may bear with the con- 
fusion of tongues while the middle stories of the tower are 
a-building, feeling confident that the workers will once again 
understand each other’s speech, and that the more clearly the 
nearer they reach to the top. ‘ 
Meanwhile we may do what in us lies to help things onward 
towards the good end. So far as inquiry is concerned, it is as 
I have said, not by deprecating and attempting to check, but 
rather by encouraging and furthering specialisation and differen- 
tiation that we can hope to hasten the ultimate integration. 
As regards teaching, however, it might be wished that the paths 
along which young minds are led were not so narrow and not 
so bounded by high walls which shut in the view. It is a matter 
of regret that the enthusiasm of the young learner should be 
spent wholly on the museum and the laboratory, that he should 
be pushed by compulsion and drawn by rewards into morpho- 
logical and physiological studies of the more formal and 
mechanical kind, while no encouragement is given to him to 
look Nature face to face in the field, and to catch direct from her 
lips the catholic teaching which she alone can give. But so 
long as all our teaching is made to pass beneath the heavy 
roller of a rigid examination system which flattens out every- 
thing over which it is dragged, I see no hope of change. 
Some kinds of learning may, perhaps, be consolidated by the 
pressure of the roller, but that of the naturalist will be squeezed 
out of him altogether. Such naturalists as we may hope to 
rear must be raised apart from, and indeed in spite of, the 
~ schools. 
July 1899. 1899. 
