148 ON SCIENCE AND ART 



which has existed from no fault of those who undertook 

 to teach, but because, until the last score of years, it 

 absolutely was not possible for any one in a great many 

 branches of science, whatever his desire might be, to 

 get instruction which would enable him to be a good 

 teacher of elementary things. All that is being rapidly 

 altered, and I hope it will soon become a thing of the 

 past. 



The last point I have referred to is the question of the 

 sufficiency of time. And here comes the rub. The teach- 

 ing of science needs time, as any other subject; but it 

 needs more time proportionally than other subjects, for 

 the amount of work obviously done, if the teaching is to 

 be, as I have said, practical. Work done in a laboratory 

 involves a good deal of expenditure of time without 

 always an obvious result, because we do not see anything 

 of that quiet process of soaking the facts into the mind, 

 which takes place through the organs of the senses. Cn 

 this ground there must be ample time given to science 

 teaching. What that amount of time should be is a 

 point which I need not discuss now; in fact, it is a 

 point which cannot be settled until one has made up 

 one's mind about various other questions. 



All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of the 

 scientific people, if I may venture to speak for more 

 than myself, is that you should put scientific teaching 

 into what statesmen call the condition of "the most 

 favoured nation"; that is to say, that it shall have as 

 large a share of the time given to education as any other 

 principal subject. You may say that that is a very 

 vague statement, because the value of the allotment of 

 time, under those circumstances, depends upon the num- 

 ber of principal subjects. It is x the time, and an 

 unknown quantity of principal subjects dividing that, 

 and science taking shares with the rest. That shows 



