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ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 
formation about our labours among tlie public, and so in¬ 
ducing a greater interest in them, partly by introducing 
training in physical science into our schools. In the art of 
exposition, that is of making difficult subjects plain, we have 
among us (not with us to-day, I am sorry to say), one who is 
a master whose powers have been acknowledged not only in 
England but in France, and still more emphatically in 
Germany. His work on Elementary Physiology has been 
translated and presented to the German public by one of 
the leading German physiologists, himself a model of clear¬ 
ness of style—who tells his countrymen in his preface that 
no German writer could expound the experimental facts 
which are the basis of physiological knowledge, as Huxley 
can. In the existence of such a man as Huxley I find a 
great source of encouragement for the future of physiology— 
not only on account of his own work, large though that has 
been (for no one builder can lay many bricks in an edifice 
where every brick requires such careful laying) as for his in¬ 
fluence on the national life. At one time I confess that I 
was disposed to underrate the value of popularising science. 
Now I see this power of exposition to be a great power for 
good. We have an example of the good that it affects in the 
history of this Association. We have another in the history 
of the Royal Institution, which has lately been made familiar 
to us by the accounts which have been given to us of that 
great and good man, who for so many years was its life. 
Faraday, the greatest physicist of his time, was equally 
master of the art of exposition. Of the influence which his 
mind thereon exercised on the minds of the men, women, and 
children, who can doubt; nor do I think that he lost by it 
himself, for although we cannot suppose that he taught 
without some exhaustion of his energies, I cannot believe 
that the effort was a useless one even to himself. I would not 
venture to say of such a man that, in explaining to children 
the fundamental conceptions which in his mind were already 
so clear, they became still clearer, but I think that it may be 
so. I pass at once to the second part of my position, that which 
relates to the teaching of science, and particularly physiology, 
in schools. This I may deal with very shortly. The teaching 
must necessarily be elementary. If it is thorough and 
genuine it is useful. To wedge a little bit of Bowdlerized 
physiology, “ something about the structure and functions of 
the human body,” as it is called, into the ordinary course of 
school education, may be an ornamental addition to it, but can 
scarcely be really useful as intellectual training. Our reform 
of education must, if it is to be attempted at all, be much 
