46 PHYSICAL RESEARCH 



is as it should be. We desire that science should 

 be welcomed gladly, and we believe it deserves 

 such a welcome because it is necessary to the man 

 who would do his best, and because it is itself 

 one of the greatest of human interests. 



That is why one has need to beware of what 

 is meant by the substitution of science for classics 

 in the education of our schools. It is utterly 

 dismal and wearisome to spend one's days on the 

 intricacies of declensions and conjugations, on the 

 exceptions to rules of grammar and the niceties 

 of first and second aorists. It is no less miserable 

 to force one's memory to absorb lists of scientific 

 data and modes of experimentation. Nothing is 

 to be gained by replacing one drudgery for the 

 other. There may be a very serious loss. Speech 

 after all is human speech, and the old Latin and 

 Greek words have served to express the minds 

 of men in times of achievement and hope, of 

 failure and despair; they have carried the great 

 truths which men have won, and all their senti- 

 ments. They are like old machinery, worn and 

 moulded by use, every mark on them the witness 

 of their service. If we do no more than make a 

 study of the marks and count the scratches we 

 make idiots of ourselves. But if we think of what 

 it all means, we move forward in our education. 

 I think that as boys at school we may have instinc- 

 tively felt that our teachers had seen the greater 

 things even though some of us may have wondered 



