500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
system at most universities, unless the student has been fortunate 
enough to come in contact with a teacher imbued with the spirit of 
research who is carrying on his own investigations, it rarely happens 
that he has the time or the means which would enable him to obtain 
any insight into the meaning of investigation before he leaves to take 
up teaching work. The need of post-graduate scholarships for this 
purpose is very widely felt, and 1s now frequently expressed. To insist 
upon such qualifications for all university students is, of course, under 
present conditions, impossible; but there should be no insuperable diffi- 
culty in insisting upon them for those who are to be allowed to enter a 
university as teachers. 
Researchers are born, not made, and it is not by any means desirable 
that all university students should be cast adrift to make new researches 
and seck discoveries even under the direction of experienced teachers 
and investigators. This must depend to some extent upon the char- 
acter of the pupil as well as of the teacher. 
The mere publication of papers may mean nothing, and much that 
is dignified with the name of research is of no account. ‘To turn a lad 
on to research, unless it be in the right spirit, may be only to set him a 
new exercise instead of an old one; to leave him to prosecute an investi- 
gation for himself may be to condemn him to disappointment and fail- 
ure. On the other hand, to carry on any piece of work, whether it be 
new or old, in the zealous spirit of inquiry, with faith in a purpose, is 
to insure the intellectual interest of the student; and I can not see why 
this spirit should not animate all university education, whether it be 
accompanied by original research or not. The essential condition is 
that the chief university teachers should themselves create an atmos- 
phere of investigation. 
So deep-seated is the belief that nothing must be undertaken with- 
out a preparatory course of training that even the best and most bril- 
liant students are frequently discouraged from undertaking a new study 
until they have been subjected to the mental discipline of an elementary 
course in it. 
I can not refrain from quoting an example which came within my 
own experience, although I have already alluded to it in another address 
delivered last year. 
When I was at Oxford a young Frenchman of exceptional ability, 
whose training had been almost exclusively literary and philosophical, 
and who was at the time engaged on a theological inquiry, expressed to 
me his regret that he had never learned to understand by practical 
experience the meaning of scientific work. And when I assured him 
that nothing was easier than to acquire practical experience by taking 
up a piece of actual investigation under the direction of a scientific 
worker, he explained to me that when he had applied for admission to 
scientific laboratories he had been told that it was useless to do so until 
