Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/67

Rh The passages I have quoted were uttered by John Stuart Mill; but you cannot hear inverted commas, and it is therefore right that I should add, without delay, that I have taken the liberty of substituting "workers in science" for "ancient dialecticians," and "science as an essential ingredient in education" for "the ancient languages as our best literary education." Mill did, in fact, deliver a noble panegyric upon classical studies. I do not doubt its justice, nor presume to question its wisdom. But I venture to maintain that no wise or just judge, who has a knowledge of the facts, will hesitate to say that it applies with equal force to scientific training.

But it is only fair to the Scottish universities to point out that they have long understood the value of science as a branch of general education. I observe, with the greatest satisfaction, that candidates for the degree of Master of Arts in this university are required to have a knowledge, not only of mental and moral philosophy, and of mathematics and natural philosophy, but of natural history, in addition to the ordinary Latin and Greek course; and that a candidate may take honors in these subjects and in chemistry.

I do not know what the requirements of your examiners may be, but I sincerely trust they are not satisfied with a mere book-knowledge of these matters. For my own part, I would not raise a finger, if I could thereby introduce mere book-work in science into every arts curriculum in the country. Let those who want to study books devote themselves to literature, in which we have the perfection of books, both as to substance and as to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known aphorism, I would say that "books are the money of literature, but only the counters of science," science (in the sense in which I now use the term) being the knowledge of fact, of which every verbal description is but an incomplete and symbolic expression. And be assured that no teaching of science is worth any thing, as a mental discipline, which is not based upon direct perception of the facts, and practical exercise of the observing and logical faculties upon them. Even in such a simple matter as the mere comprehension of form, ask the most practised and widely-informed anatomist what is the difference between his knowledge of a structure which he has read about and his knowledge of the same structure when he has seen it for himself, and he will tell you that the two things are not comparable—the difference is infinite. Thus I am very strongly inclined to agree with some learned school-masters who say that, in their experience, the teaching of science is all waste time. As they teach it, I have no doubt it is. But, to teach it otherwise, requires an amount of personal labor and a development of means and appliances, which must strike horror and dismay into a man accustomed to mere book-work, and who has been in the habit of teaching a class of fifty without much strain upon his energies. And this is one of the real difficulties in the way of the introduction of physical