296 



A nniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



necessary consequence of the growth of science ; but I do think it is 

 a tendency to be feared, and an evil to be most carefully provided 

 against. The man who works away at one corner of nature, shutting 

 his eyes to all the rest, diminishes his chances of seeing what is to 

 be seen in that corner; for, as I need hardly remind my present 

 hearers, that which the investigator perceives depends much more on 

 that which lies behind his sense organs than on the object in front of 

 them. 



It appears to me that the only defence against this tendency to 

 the degeneration of scientific workers, lies in the organisation and 

 extension of scientific education, in such a manner as to secure 

 breadth of culture without superficiality ; and, on the other hand, 

 depth and precision of knowledge, without narrowness. 



I think it is quite possible to meet these requirements. There is no 

 reason, in the nature of things, why the student who is destined for a 

 scientific career should not, in the first place, go through a course of 

 instruction such as would ensure him a real, that is to say, a practical 

 acquaintance with the elements of each of the great divisions of mathe- 

 matical and physical science ; nor why this instruction in what (if I may 

 borrow a phrase from medicine) I may call the institutes of science, 

 should not be followed up by more special instruction, covering the 

 whole field of that particular division in which the student eventually 

 proposes to become a specialist. I say not only that there is no 

 reason why this should not be done, but, on the ground of practi- 

 cal experience, I venture to add that there is no difficulty in doing 

 it. Some thirty years ago, my colleagues and I framed a scheme 

 of instruction on the lines just indicated, for the students of the 

 institution which has grown into what is now known as the Normal 

 School of Science and Royal School of Mines. We have found no 

 obstacles in the way of carrying the scheme into practice except 

 such as arise, partly, from the limitations of time forced upon us from 

 without ; and, partly, from the extremely defective character of 

 ordinary education. With respect to the first difficulty, we ought, in 

 my judgment, to bestow at least four, or better, five, years on the 

 work which has, at present, to be got through in three. And, as 

 regards the second difficulty, we are hampered not only by the 

 ignorance of even the rudiments of physical science, on the part of 

 the students who come to us from ordinary schools, and by their very 

 poor mathematical acquirements, but by the miserable character of 

 the so-called literary training which they have undergone. 



Nothing would help the man of science of the future to rise to the 

 level of his great enterprise more effectually than certain modifica- 

 tions, on the one hand, of primary and secondary school education, 

 and, on the other, of the conditions which are attached by the 

 Universities to the attainment of their degrees and their rewards 



