Elementary Botanical Teaching. 249 
thinking and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and the more 
closely intellectual activity is related to action the more intimately 
the deep-lying instinct for doing is satisfied. In this psychological 
fact lies the essence of the real case for scientific as distinct from 
literary culture, because science—especially experimental science 
—increases our power of doing things and gives a new outlook on 
the whole world of active life. When the pursuit of science is 
divorced from life it tends to sterilise the average mind, not because 
it ceases to be science, but because it gives more and more the 
feeling of unreality. 
Further, and this is also of great importance, practical life 
offers for solution a large number of problems which actually 
interest the greatest number of workers, and the continual inflow 
of these constantly vitalises the atmosphere of the laboratory and 
stimulates the interest and activity of the workers. 
In devising a scheme of scientific training we have to keep 
these considerations constantly in mind. We have to train teachers 
who have a firm grip on essentials, but besides that, we should 
provide for the many who will soon enter upon some form of 
practical pursuit as a means of livelihood, for the smaller number 
who are fitted to do useful work in the investigation of practical 
problems, as well as for the few who are capable of the highest 
type of research without reference to immediate utility. All 
should have the same elementary training, in the case of botany 
based on the life of the plant and its relation to the life of the 
world at large. At each stage of higher development opportunity 
should be provided of branching off into practical pursuits, or into 
the direction of practical pursuits, till the few who are left, whether 
they engage in research or in teaching or in both together, will be 
only those best fitted to advance or to expound the theoretical 
knowledge without which practical results must remain sunk in 
empiricism. Only in the closest connexion, the constant inter¬ 
action, of the spirit of science and the spirit of practical life can 
any branch of scientific training realise its highest ideal. 
All the considerations that have been put forward were as 
true four years ago as they are to-day, because they are based on 
practical human needs and on the fundamental nature of the 
human mind. But the realisation of the conditions in which England, 
and indeed all the countries of the civilised world, will find them¬ 
selves after the war multiplies tenfold the force of what has been 
