bring with it, two reasons of a more utilitarian kind may be given to
science students why they should seek this communion. Men who have been
too exclusively trained in science, or are too much absorbed in its
pursuit, are not always the most agreeable members of society. They are
apt to be somewhat angular and professional, contributing little that
is interesting to general conversation, save when they get a chance
of introducing their own science and its doings. Perhaps the greatest
bore I ever met was a man of science, whose mind and training were so
wholly mathematical and physical that he seemed unable to look at the
simplest subject save in its physical relations, about which he would
discourse till he had long exhausted the patience of the auditor whom
he detained. There is no more efficacious remedy for this tendency to
what is popularly known as 'shop' than the breadth and culture of mind
that spring from wide reading in ancient and modern literature.
The other reason for the advice I offer you is one of which you will
hardly, perhaps, appreciate the full force in the present stage of
your career. One result of the comparative neglect of the literary side
of education by many men of science is conspicuously seen in their
literary style. It is true that in our time we have had some eminent
scientific workers, who have also been masters of nervous and eloquent
English. But it is not less true that the literature of science is
burdened with a vast mass of slipshod, ungrammatical and clumsy
writing, wherein sometimes even the meaning of the authors is left in
doubt. Let me press upon you the obvious duty of not increasing this
unwieldy burden. Study the best masters of style, and when once you
have made up your minds what you want to say, try to express it in the
simplest, clearest, and most graceful language you can find.
Remember that, while education is the drawing out and cultivation of
all the powers of the mind, no system has yet been devised that will by
itself develop with equal success every one of these powers. The system
under which we have been trained may have done as much for us as it
can do. Each of us is thereafter left to supplement its deficiencies
by self-culture. And in the ordinary science-instruction of the time
one of the most obvious of these inevitable deficiencies is the undue
limitation or neglect of the literary side of education.
But in the science-instruction itself there are dangers regarding
which we cannot be too watchful. In this College and in all the
other well-organised scientific institutions of the country, the
principles of science are taught orally and experimentally. Every
branch of knowledge is expounded in its bearings on other branches.
Its theory is held up as the first great aim of instruction, and its
practical applications are made subsequent and subordinate. Divisions
of science are taught here which may have few practical applications,
but which are necessary for a comprehensive survey of the whole circle
of scientific truth. Now, you may possibly have heard, and in the
midst of a busy industrial community you are not unlikely to hear,
remarks made in criticism of this system or method of tuition. The
importance of scientific training will be frankly acknowledged and
even insisted upon, but you will sometimes hear this admission coupled
with the proviso that the science must be of a practical kind; must,
in short, be just such and no other, as will fit young men to turn it
to practical use in the manufactures or industries to which they may
be summoned. The critics who make this limitation boast that they are
practical men, and that in their opinion theory is useless or worse for
the main purposes for which they would encourage and support a great
scientific school.
Now I am quite sure that those science students who have passed even
a single session in Mason College can see for themselves the utter
fallacy of such statements and the injury that would be done to the
practical usefulness of this institution, and to the general progress
of the industrial applications of science, if such short-sighted views
were ever carried into effect. There can be no thorough, adequate, and
effective training in science unless it be based on a comprehensive
study of facts and principles, altogether apart from any economic uses
to which they may be put. Science must be pursued for her own sake, in
the first instance, and without reference to any pecuniary benefits she
may be able to confer. We never can tell when the most theoretical part
of pure science may be capable of being turned to the most important
practical uses. Who could have surmised, for instance, that in the
early tentative experiments of Volta, Galvani, and others last century
lay the germ of the modern world-grasping electric telegraph? Or when
Wedgwood, at the beginning of this century, copied paintings by the
agency of light upon nitrate of silver, who could have foretold that he
was laying the foundations of the marvellous art of photography.
There can be no more pernicious doctrine than that which would
measure the commercial value of science by its immediate practical
usefulness, and would restrict its place in education to those only
of its sub-divisions which may be of service to the industries of the
present time. Such a curtailed method of instruction is not education
in the true sense of the term. It is only a kind of cramming for a
specific purpose, and the knowledge which it imparts, being one-sided
and imperfect, is of little value beyond its own limited range. I by
no means wish to undervalue the importance of technical instruction.
By all means let our artisans know as much as can be taught them
regarding the nature and laws of the scientific processes in which
they are engaged. But it is not by mere technical instruction that
we shall maintain and extend the industrial and commercial greatness
of the country. If we are not only to hold our own, but to widen
the boundaries of applied science, to perfect our manufactures, and
to bring new departments of Nature into the service of man, it is by
broad, thorough, untrammelled scientific research that our success must
be achieved.
When, therefore, you are asked to explain of what practical use are
some of the branches of science in which you have been trained, do not
lose patience with your questioner, nor answer him as you think such a
Philistine deserves to be answered. Give him a few illustrations of the
thousands of ways in which science, that might have been stigmatised
by him as merely abstract and theoretical, has yet been made to
minister to the practical needs of humanity. Above all, urge him to
attend some of the classes of Mason College, where he will learn, in
the most effectual manner, the intimate connection between theory and
practice. If he chance to be wealthy, the experiment may possibly open
his eyes to the more urgent needs of the institution and induce him to
contribute liberally towards their satisfaction.
Among the advantages and privileges of your life at college there
is one, the full significance and value of which you will better
appreciate in later years. You have here an opportunity of acquiring a
wide general view of the whole range of scientific thought and method.
If you proceed to a science degree you are required to lay a broad
foundation of acquaintance with the physical and biological sciences.
You are thus brought into contact with the subjects of each great
department of natural knowledge, and you learn enough regarding them
to enable you to understand their scope and to sympathise with the
workers who are engaged upon them. But when your academical career is
ended, no such chance of wide general training is ever likely to be
yours again. You will be dragged into the whirl of life, where you
will probably find little time or opportunity to travel much beyond
the sphere of employment to which you may have been called. Make the
most, therefore, of the advantages which in this respect you meet with
here. Try to ensure that your acquaintance with each branch of science
embraced in your circle of studies shall be as full and accurate as
lies in your power to make it. Even in departments outside the bounds
of your own tastes and ultimate requirements, do not neglect the
means provided for your gaining some knowledge of them. I urge this
duty, not because its diligent discharge will obviously tell in your
examinations, but because it will give you that scientific culture
which while enabling you to appreciate and enjoy the successive
advances of other sciences than that which you may select for special
cultivation, will at the same time increase your general usefulness and
aid you in your own researches.
The days of Admirable Crichtons are long since past. So rapid and
general is the onward march of science that not only can no man keep
pace with it in every direction, but it has become almost hopelessly
impossible to remain abreast of the progress in each of the several
sub-divisions of even a single science. We are entering more and more
upon the age of specialists. It grows increasingly difficult for the
specialists, even in kindred sciences, to remain in touch with each
other. When you find yourselves fairly launched into the vortex of
life you will look back with infinite satisfaction to the time when you
were enabled to lay a broad and solid platform of general acquirement
within the walls of this College.
Perhaps the most remarkable defect in the older or literary methods
of education was the neglect of the faculty of observation. For the
training of the other mental faculties ample provision was made, but
for this, one of the most important of the whole, no care was taken.
If a boy was naturally observant, he was left to cultivate the use of
his eyes as he best might; if he was not observant, nothing was done
to improve him in this respect, unless it were, here and there, by
the influence of such an intelligent teacher as is described in Mrs.
Barbauld's famous story of _Eyes and No Eyes_. Even when science began
to be introduced into our schools, it was still taught in the old or
literary fashion. Lectures and lessons were given by masters who got
up their information from books, but had no practical knowledge of the
subjects they taught. Class-books were written by men equally destitute
of a personal acquaintance with any department of science. The lessons
were learnt by rote, and not infrequently afforded opportunities
rather for frolic than for instruction. Happily this state of things,
though not quite extinct, is rapidly passing away. Practical tuition
is everywhere coming into use, while the old-fashioned cut-and-dry
lesson-book is giving way to the laboratory, the field-excursion, and
the school-museum.
It is mainly through the eyes that we gain our knowledge and
appreciation of the world in which we live. But we are not all equally
endowed with the gift of intelligent vision. On the contrary, in no
respect, perhaps, do we differ more from each other than in our powers
of observation. Obviously, a man who has a quick eye to note what
passes around him must, in the ordinary affairs of life, stand at a
considerable advantage over another man who moves unobservantly on
his course. We cannot create an observing faculty any more than we
can create a memory, but we may do much to develop both. This is a
feature in education of much more practical and national importance
than might be supposed. I suspect that it lies closer than might
be imagined to the success of our commercial relations abroad. Our
prevalent system of instruction has for generations past done nothing
to cultivate the habit of observation, and has thus undoubtedly left us
at a disadvantage in comparison with nations that have adopted methods
of tuition wherein the observing faculty is regularly trained. With
our world-wide commerce we have gone on supplying to foreign countries
the same manufactured goods for which our fathers found markets in all
quarters of the globe. Our traders, however, now find themselves in
competition with traders from other nations who have been trained to
better use of their powers of observation, and who, taking careful note
of the gradually changing tastes and requirements of the races which
they visit, have been quick to report these changes and to take means
for meeting them. Thus, in our own centres of trade we find ourselves
in danger of being displaced by rivals with sharper eyes and greater
powers of adaptation.
It is the special function of science to cultivate this faculty of
observation. Here in Mason College, from the very beginning of your
scientific studies you have been taught to use your eyes, to watch the
phenomena that appear and disappear around you, to note the sequence
and relation of these phenomena, and thus, as it were, to enter beneath
the surface into the very soul of things. You cannot, however, have
failed to remark among your fellow-students great inequalities in their
powers of observation, and great differences in the development of
these powers under the very same system of instruction. And you may
have noticed that, speaking generally, those class-mates who have shown
the best observing faculty have taken a foremost place among their
fellows. It is not a question of mere brain-power. A man may possess
a colossal intellect, while his faculty of observation may be of the
feeblest kind. One of the greatest mathematicians of this century who,
full of honours, recently passed away from us, had so little cognisance
of his surroundings, that many ludicrous stories are told of his
child-like mistakes as to place and time.
The continued development of the faculty of prompt and accurate
observation is a task on which you cannot bestow too much attention.
Your education here must already have taught you its value. In your
future career the use you make of this faculty may determine your
success or your failure. But not only have your studies in this College
trained your observing powers, they have at the same time greatly
widened the range of your mental vision by the variety of objects which
you have been compelled to look at and examine. The same methods which
have been so full of benefit to you here can be continued by you in
after life. And be assured that in maintaining them in active use you
will take the most effective means for securing success in the careers
you may choose to follow.
But above and beyond the prospect of any material success there is a
higher motive which will doubtless impel you. The education of your
observing faculty has been carried on during your introduction to new
realms of knowledge. The whole domain of Nature has been spread out
before you. You have been taught to observe thousands of objects and
processes of which, common though they may be, you had previously
taken no note. Henceforth, wherever you may go, you cannot wander with
ignorant or unobservant eyes. Land and sea and sky, bird and beast
and flower, now awaken in you a new interest, for you have learned
lessons from them that have profoundly impressed you, and you have
discovered meanings in them of which you had never dreamed. You have
been permitted to pass within the veil of nature, and to perceive some
of the inner mechanism of this world.
Thus, your training in science has not only taught you to use your
eyes, but to use them intelligently, and in such a way as to see much
more in the world around you than is visible to the uninstructed man.
This widened perception might be illustrated from any department of
natural science. Let me take, by way of example, the relation of the
student of science towards the features and charms of landscape. It
may be said that no training is needed to comprehend these beauties;
that the man in the street, the holiday-maker from town, is just as
competent as the man of science to appreciate them, and get quite as
much pleasure out of them. We need not stop to discuss the relative
amounts of enjoyment which different orders of spectators may derive
from scenery; but obviously the student of science has one great
advantage in this matter. Not only can he enjoy to the full all the
outward charms which appeal to the ordinary eye, but he sees in the
features of the landscape new charms and interests which the ordinary
untrained eye cannot see. Your accomplished Professor of Geology has
taught you the significance of the outer lineaments of the land. While
under his guidance you have traced with delight the varied features of
the lovely landscapes of the Midlands, your eyes have been trained to
mark their connection with each other, and their respective places in
the ordered symmetry of the whole scene. You perceive why there is here
a height and there a hollow; you note what has given the ridges and
vales their dominant forms and directions; you detect the causes that
have spread out a meadow in one place and raised up a hill in another.
Above and beyond all questions as to the connection and origin of its
several parts, the landscape appeals vividly to your imagination.
You know that it has not always worn the aspect which it presents
to-day. You have observed in these ridges proofs that the sea once
covered their site. You have seen the remains of long extinct shells,
fishes, and reptiles that have been disinterred from the mud and silt
left behind by the vanished waters. You have found evidence that not
once only, but again and again, after vast lapses of time and many
successive revolutions, the land has sunk beneath the ocean and has
once more emerged. You have been shown traces of underground commotion,
and you can point to places where, over central England, volcanoes were
once active. You have learnt that the various elements of the landscape
have thus been gradually put together during successive ages, and that
the slow processes, whereby the characteristic forms of the ground have
been carved out, are still in progress under your eye.
While, therefore, you are keenly alive to the present beauty of the
scene, it speaks to you at every turn of the past. Each feature recalls
some incident in the strange primeval history that has been transacted
here. The succession of contrasts between what is now and what has been
fills you with wonder and delight. You feel as if a new sense had been
given to you, and that with its aid your appreciation of scenery has
been enlarged and deepened to a marvellous degree.
And so too is it with your relation to all the other departments of
Nature. The movements of the clouds, the fall of rain, the flow of
brook and river, the changes of the seasons, the succession of calm and
storm, do not pass before your eyes now as they once did. While they
minister to the joy of life, they speak to you of that all-embracing
system of process and law that governs the world. The wayside flower
is no longer to your eyes merely a thing of beauty. You have found it
to be that and far more--an exquisite organism in which the several
parts are admirably designed to promote the growth of the plant and to
perpetuate the life of the species. Every insect and bird is now to you
an embodiment of the mystery of life. The forces of Nature, once so
dark and so dreaded, are now seen by you to be intelligible, orderly
and capable of adaptation to the purposes of man. In the physical and
chemical laboratories you have been brought into personal contact with
these forces, and have learnt to direct their operations, as you have
watched the manifold effects of energy upon the infinite varieties of
matter.
When you have completed your course of study and leave this College,
crowned, I hope, with academic distinction, there will be your future
career in life to choose and follow. A small number among you may,
perhaps, be so circumstanced as to be able to devote yourselves
entirely to original scientific research, selecting such branches
of inquiry as may have specially interested you here, and giving up
your whole time and energy to investigation. A much larger number
will, no doubt, enter professions where a scientific training can be
turned to practical account, and you may become engineers, chemists,
or medical men. But in the struggle for existence, which every year
grows keener amongst us, these professions are more and more crowded,
so that a large proportion of your ranks may not succeed in finding
places there, and may in the end be pushed into walks in life where
there may be little or no opportunity for making much practical use of
the knowledge in science which you have gained here. To those who may
ultimately be thus situated it will always be of advantage to have had
the mental training given in this Institution, and it will probably be
your own fault if, even under unfavourable conditions, you do not find,
from time to time, chances of turning your scientific acquirements to
account. Your indebtedness to your professors demands that you shall
make the effort, and, for the credit of the College, you are bound to
do your best.
Among the mental habits which your education in science has helped
to foster, there are a few which I would specially commend to your
attention as worthy of your most sedulous care all through life.
In the first place I would put Accuracy. You have learnt in the
laboratory how absolutely essential this condition is for scientific
investigation. We are all supposed to make the ascertainment of the
truth our chief aim, but we do not all take the same trouble to attain
it. Accuracy involves labour, and every man is not gifted with an
infinite capacity for taking pains. Inexactness of observation is sure
sooner or later to be detected, and to be visited on the head of the
man who commits it. If his observations are incorrect, the conclusions
he has drawn from them may be vitiated. Thus all the toil he has
endured in a research may be rendered of no avail, and the reputation
he might have gained is not only lost but replaced by discredit. It
is quite true that absolute accuracy is often unattainable; you can
only approach it. But the greater the exertion you make to reach it,
the greater will be the success of your investigations. The effort
after accuracy will be transferred from your scientific work to your
every-day life and become a habit of mind, advantageous both to
yourselves and to society at large.
In the next place, I would set Thoroughness, which is closely akin
to accuracy. Again, your training here has shown you how needful
it is in scientific research to adopt thorough and exhaustive
methods of procedure. The conditions to be taken into account are so
numerous and complex, the possible combinations so manifold, before
a satisfactory conclusion can be reached. A laborious collection of
facts must be made. Each supposed fact must be sifted out and weighed.
The evidence must be gone over again and yet again, each link in its
chain being scrupulously tested. The deduction to which the evidence
may seem to point must be closely and impartially scrutinised, every
other conceivable explanation of the facts being frankly and fully
considered. Obviously the man whose education has inured him to the
cultivation of a mental habit of this kind is admirably equipped for
success in any walk in life which he may be called upon to enter.
The accuracy and thoroughness which you have learnt to appreciate
and practise at College must never be dropped in later years. Carry
them with you as watchwords, and make them characteristic of all your
undertakings.