discipline, and prepares the scholar for common life. What have we to do
in every-day life? Most of the business which demands our attention is
matter of fact, which needs, in the first place, to be accurately
observed or apprehended; in the second, to be interpreted by inductive
and deductive reasonings, which are altogether similar in their nature
to those employed in science. In the one case, as in the other, whatever
is taken for granted is so taken at one's own peril; fact and reason
are the ultimate arbiters, and patience and honesty are the great
helpers out of difficulty.
But if scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it
must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a
child the general phenomena of Nature, you must, as far as possible,
give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany,
he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in
teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill
him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he
knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a
magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of
the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is
his duty to doubt until he is compelled, by the absolute authority of
Nature, to believe that which is written in books. Pursue this
discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that,
however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured
into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless
value in practical life.
One is constantly asked, When should this scientific education be
commenced? I should say with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already
said, a child seeks for information about matters of physical science as
soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an
object-lesson of one sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for
systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science.
People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters,
and in the same breath insist upon their learning their Catechism,
which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in
the educational course I have proposed. Again, I am incessantly told
that we, who advocate the introduction of science into schools, make no
allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my
belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, "_fit, non nascitur_,"
and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression
of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent
attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless,
but essentially indigestible.
Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are
apt to forget another very important condition of success--important in
all kinds of teaching, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when
the scholars are very young. This condition is, that the teacher should
himself really and practically know his subject. If he does, he will be
able to speak of it in the easy language, and with the completeness of
conviction, with which he talks of any ordinary every-day matter. If he
does not, he will be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical
phraseology which he has got up; and a dead dogmatism, which oppresses,
or raises opposition, will take the place of the lively confidence, born
of personal conviction, which cheers and encourages the eminently
sympathetic mind of childhood.
I have already hinted that such scientific training as we seek for may
be given without making any extravagant claim upon the time now devoted
to education. We ask only for "a most favoured nation" clause in our
treaty with the schoolmaster; we demand no more than that science shall
have as much time given to it as any other single subject--say four
hours a week in each class of an ordinary school.
For the present, I think men of science would be well content with such
an arrangement as this; but, speaking for myself, I do not pretend to
believe that such an arrangement can be, or will be, permanent. In these
times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its
leaves and flowers in the ground; and, I confess, I should very much
like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded
among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the
foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can
have a claim to permanence, unless it recognises the truth that
education has two great ends to which everything else must be
subordinated. The one of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to
develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong.
With wisdom and uprightness a nation can make its way worthily, and
beauty will follow in the footsteps of the two, even if she be not
specially invited; while there is perhaps no sight in the whole world
more saddening and revolting than is offered by men sunk in ignorance of
everything but what other men have written; seemingly devoid of moral
belief or guidance; but with the sense of beauty so keen, and the power
of expression so cultivated, that their sensual caterwauling may be
almost mistaken for the music of the spheres.
At present, education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of
the power of expression, and of the sense of literary beauty. The matter
of having anything to say, beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or
of possessing any criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish
between the Godlike and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I
think I do not err in saying that if science were made the foundation of
education, instead of being, at most, stuck on as cornice to the
edifice, this state of things could not exist.
In advocating the introduction of physical science as a leading element
in education, I by no means refer only to the higher schools. On the
contrary, I believe that such a change is even more imperatively called
for in those primary schools, in which the children of the poor are
expected to turn to the best account the little time they can devote to
the acquisition of knowledge. A great step in this direction has already
been made by the establishment of science-classes under the Department
of Science and Art,--a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but
which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare
of the people, than many political changes, over which the noise of
battle has rent the air.
Under the regulations to which I refer, a schoolmaster can set up a
class in one or more branches of science; his pupils will be examined,
and the State will pay him, at a certain rate, for all who succeed in
passing. I have acted as an examiner under this system from the
beginning of its establishment, and this year I expect to have not fewer
than a couple of thousand sets of answers to questions in Physiology,
mainly from young people of the artisan class, who have been taught in
the schools which are now scattered all over Great Britain and Ireland.
Some of my colleagues, who have to deal with subjects such as Geometry,
for which the present teaching power is better organized, I understand
are likely to have three or four times as many papers. So far as my own
subjects are concerned, I can undertake to say that a great deal of the
teaching, the results of which are before me in these examinations, is
very sound and good; and I think it is in the power of the examiners,
not only to keep up the present standard, but to cause an almost
unlimited improvement. Now what does this mean? It means that by holding
out a very moderate inducement, the masters of primary schools in many
parts of the country have been led to convert them into little foci of
scientific instruction; and that they and their pupils have contrived to
find, or to make, time enough to carry out this object with a very
considerable degree of efficiency. That efficiency will, I doubt not, be
very much increased as the system becomes known and perfected, even with
the very limited leisure left to masters and teachers on week-days. And
this leads me to ask, Why should scientific teaching be limited to
week-days?
Ecclesiastically-minded persons are in the habit of calling things they
do not like by very hard names, and I should not wonder if they brand
the proposition I am about to make as blasphemous, and worse. But, not
minding this, I venture to ask, Would there really be anything wrong in
using part of Sunday for the purpose of instructing those who have no
other leisure, in a knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man's
relation to nature?
I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish, not for
the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching the people
the things that are for their good, but side by side with them. I cannot
but think that there is room for all of us to work in helping to bridge
over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our feet.
And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred, object
that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship,
to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of
the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which
must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to
know--I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet.
There must be something very wrong going on in the instrument of logic,
if it turns out such conclusions from such premisses.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Mr. Quain's words (_Medical Times and Gazette_, February 20)
are:--"A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and
the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I
have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several
sciences--physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy,
therapeutics--all these, the facts and the language and the laws of
each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the
Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything better
than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cambridge Lecturer
have reported for their Universities. Supposing that at school young
people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in physics,
chemistry, and a branch of natural history--say botany--with the
physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary
knowledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning. The whole studies
are processes of observation and induction--the best discipline of the
mind for the purposes of life--for our purposes not less than any. 'By
such study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive
science the mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.' By that
plan the burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and
more time devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's
'final and supreme stage' of the knowledge of Medicine."
V.
ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES.
The subject to which I have to beg your attention during the ensuing
hour is "The Relation of Physiological Science to other branches of
Knowledge."
Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their strict logical
order, of that series of discourses of which the present lecture is a
member, I should have preceded my friend and colleague Mr. Henfrey, who
addressed you on Monday last; but while, for the sake of that order, I
must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the Educational bearings
of Biology in general _does_ precede that of Special Zoology and Botany,
I am rejoiced to be able to take advantage of the light thus already
thrown upon the tendency and methods of Physiological Science.
Regarding Physiological Science, then, in its widest sense--as the
equivalent of _Biology_--the Science of Individual Life--we have to
consider in succession:
1. Its position and scope as a branch of knowledge.
2. Its value as a means of mental discipline.
3. Its worth as practical information.
And lastly,
4. At what period it may best be made a branch of Education.
Our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, of course, upon
the nature of the subject-matter of Biology; and I think a few
preliminary considerations will place before you in a clear light the
vast difference which exists between the living bodies with which
Physiological science is concerned, and the remainder of the
universe;--between the phænomena of Number and Space, of Physical and of
Chemical force, on the one hand, and those of Life on the other.
The mathematician, the physicist, and the chemist contemplate things in
a condition of rest; they look upon a state of equilibrium as that to
which all bodies normally tend.
The mathematician does not suppose that a quantity will alter, or that a
given point in space will change its direction with regard to another
point, spontaneously. And it is the same with the physicist. When Newton
saw the apple fall, he concluded at once that the act of falling was not
the result of any power inherent in the apple, but that it was the
result of the action of something else on the apple. In a similar
manner, all physical force is regarded as the disturbance of an
equilibrium to which things tended before its exertion,--to which they
will tend again after its cessation.
The chemist equally regards chemical change in a as the effect of the
action of something external to the body changed. A chemical compound
once formed would persist for ever, if no alteration took place in
surrounding conditions.
But to the student of Life the aspect of nature is reversed. Here,
incessant, and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest
the exception--the anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no
inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.
Permit me, however, to give more force and clearness to these somewhat
abstract considerations, by an illustration or two.
Imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary temperature, in an
atmosphere saturated with vapour. The _quantity_ and the _figure_ of
that water will not change, so far as we know, for ever.
Suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the vessel--motion and disturbance
of figure exactly proportional to the momentum of the gold will take
place. But after a time the effects of this disturbance will
subside--equilibrium will be restored, and the water will return to its
passive state.
Expose the water to cold--it will solidify--and in so doing its
particles will arrange themselves in definite crystalline shapes. But
once formed, these crystals change no further.
Again, substitute for the lump of gold some substance capable of
entering into chemical relations with the water:--say, a mass of that
substance which is called "protein"--the substance of flesh:--a very
considerable disturbance of equilibrium will take place--all sorts of
chemical compositions and decompositions will occur; but in the end, as
before, the result will be the resumption of a condition of rest.
Instead of such a mass of _dead_ protein, however, take a particle of
_living_ protein--one of those minute microscopic living things which
throng our pools, and are known as Infusoria--such a creature, for
instance, as an Euglena, and place it in our vessel of water. It is a
round mass provided with a long filament, and except in this peculiarity
of shape, presents no appreciable physical or chemical difference
whereby it might be distinguished from the particle of dead protein.
But the difference in the phænomena to which it will give rise is
immense: in the first place it will develop a vast quantity of physical
force--cleaving the water in all directions with considerable rapidity
by means of the vibrations of the long filament or cilium.
Nor is the amount of chemical energy which the little creature possesses
less striking. It is a perfect laboratory in itself, and it will act and
react upon the water and the matters contained therein; converting them
into new compounds resembling its own substance, and, at the same time,
giving up portions of its own substance which have become effete.
Furthermore, the Euglena will increase in size; but this increase is by
no means unlimited, as the increase of a crystal might be. After it has
grown to a certain extent it divides, and each portion assumes the form
of the original, and proceeds to repeat the process of growth and
division.
Nor is this all. For after a series of such divisions and subdivisions,
these minute points assume a totally new form, lose their long
tails--round themselves, and secrete a sort of envelope or box, in which
they remain shut up for a time, eventually to resume, directly or
indirectly, their primitive mode of existence.
Now, so far as we know, there is no natural limit to the existence of
the Euglena, or of any other living germ. A living species once launched
into existence tends to live for ever.
Consider how widely different this living particle is from the dead
atoms with which the physicist and chemist have to do!
The particle of gold falls to the bottom and rests--the particle of dead
protein decomposes and disappears--it also rests: but the _living_
protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its forces nor to any
permanency of form, but is essentially distinguished as a disturber of
equilibrium so far as force is concerned,--as undergoing continual
metamorphosis and change, in point of form.
Tendency to equilibrium of force and to permanency of form then, are the
characters of that portion of the universe which does not live--the
domain of the chemist and physicist.
Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium,--to take on forms which
succeed one another in definite cycles, is the character of the living
world.
What is the cause of this wonderful difference between the dead particle
and the living particle of matter appearing in other respects identical?
that difference to which we give the name of Life?
I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that, by and by, philosophers
will discover some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular
cases--very possibly they will find out some bond between
physico-chemical phænomena on the one hand, and vital phænomena on the
other. At present, however, we assuredly know of none; and I think we
shall exercise a wise humility in confessing that, for us at least, this
successive assumption of different states--(external conditions
remaining the same)--this _spontaneity of action_--if I may use a term
which implies more than I would be answerable for--which constitutes so
vast and plain a practical distinction between living bodies and those
which do not live, is an ultimate fact; indicating as such, the
existence of a broad line of demarcation between the subject-matter of
Biological and that of all other sciences.
For I would have it understood that this simple Euglena is the type of
_all_ living things, so far as the distinction between these and inert
matter is concerned. That cycle of changes, which is constituted by
perhaps not more than two or three steps in the Euglena, is as clearly
manifested in the multitudinous stages through which the germ of an oak
or of a man passes. Whatever forms the Living Being may take on, whether
simple or complex, _production_, _growth_, _reproduction_, are the
phænomena which distinguish it from that which does not live.
If this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing from the
physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, enters upon a totally
new order of facts; and it will next be for us to consider how far these
new facts involve _new_ methods, or require a modification of those with
which he is already acquainted. Now a great deal is said about the
peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and of the different
methods which are pursued in the different sciences. The Mathematics
are said to have one special method; Physics another, Biology a third,
and so forth. For my own part, I must confess that I do not understand
this phraseology.
So far as I can arrive at any clear comprehension of the matter, Science
is not, as many would seem to suppose, a modification of the black art,
suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, and flourishing mainly
in consequence of the decay of the Inquisition.
Science is, I believe, nothing but _trained and organized common sense_,
differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw
recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far
as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a
savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and
perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. The
_real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon;
in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in
the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But after all, the
sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman developed
and perfected.
So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised
by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A
detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe,
by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the
extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does
that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain
of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset
the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by which
Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.
The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness, the
methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly;
and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific
method--must be as truly a man of science--as the veriest bookworm of us
all; though I have no doubt that the man of business will find himself
out to be a philosopher with as much surprise as M. Jourdain exhibited,
when he discovered that he had been all his life talking prose. If,
however, there be no real difference between the methods of science and
those of common life, it would seem, on the face of the matter, highly
improbable that there should be any difference between the methods of
the different sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly taken for
granted, that there is a very wide difference between the Physiological
and other sciences in point of method.
In the first place it is said--and I take this point first, because the
imputation is too frequently admitted by Physiologists themselves--that
Biology differs from the Physico-chemical and Mathematical sciences in
being "inexact."
Now, this phrase "inexact" must refer either to the _methods_ or to the
_results_ of Physiological science.
It cannot be correct to apply it to the methods; for, as I hope to show
you by and by, these are identical in all sciences, and whatever is true
of Physiological method is true of Physical and Mathematical method.
Is it then the _results_ of Biological science which are "inexact"? I
think not. If I say that respiration is performed by the lungs; that
digestion is effected in the stomach; that the eye is the organ of
sight; that the jaws of a vertebrated animal never open sideways, but
always up and down; while those of an annulose animal always open
sideways, and never up and down--I am enumerating propositions which are
as exact as anything in Euclid. How then has this notion of the
inexactness of Biological science come about? I believe from two causes:
first, because, in consequence of the great complexity of the science
and the multitude of interfering conditions, we are very often only
enabled to predict approximatively what will occur under given
circumstances; and secondly, because, on account of the comparative
youth of the Physiological sciences, a great many of their laws are
still imperfectly worked out. But, in an educational point of view, it
is most important to distinguish between the essence of a science and
the accidents which surround it; and essentially, the methods and
results of Physiology are as exact as those of Physics or Mathematics.