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SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
meaning of the word; that is, they how from the laws of our 
own nature. The impulses of insanity and intoxication seem 
to over-ride these laws, and in a certain sense do over-ride 
them, by deranging the functions of the brain; thus the 
drunkard or the madman is no longer, during his paroxysms, 
a free agent. His actions do not flow from the laws of his 
nature, so much as from the laws of his disease. 
In speaking of the “ Will,” we have to guard against the 
natural assumption that the same word always means the 
same thing. What do we mean, for instance, when we speak 
of a man of strong Will ? Sometimes we mean that he is a 
man of strong Impulses, who dominates and tyrannises over 
others by the force of his passions. But his Volitions—the 
conscious efforts of his mind—may be few. Or again, we 
may mean that he is a man of strong Principles; that his 
trains of thought and moral feeling are definitely organised, 
so that his moral nature acts automatically. But in this 
case, if there are few Impulses needing to be inhibited, there 
will be few Volitions. 
A man of Will, then, is not necessarily a man of Volition. 
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SCIENCE 
TEACHING IN ENGLAND; 
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO BOTANY. 
Address to the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical 
Society, as Retiring President, by 
W. HILLHOUSE, M.A., F.L.S. 
professor of botany and vegetable physiology, mason science 
COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM). 
(Continued from page 86.) 
The difficulties in the way of the systematic teaching 
of science in schools belong to one of several heads. 
Perhaps the most important of these is the historical difficulty. 
The educational system of an old country is not constructed ; 
it has grown. In our relations with institutions in the general 
body politic we constantly come across this method of 
reasoning: — “Were we to formulate a brand new constitution 
such and such a thing would find no place in it. It is there 
now merely because it has been there in the past. It has no 
other raison d'etre. Does not logic demand, therefore, its 
removal.” But I do not think we can fully appreciate 
the historical difficulty merely by thus looking at matters. 
That which has grown up in a nation’s life is not like a rock 
