nd
prehistoric, a physical religion of astonishing beauty. Some of our
Morris men are now giving all the vigour of their young bodies to a great
and just cause. Let us wish them a victorious home-coming.

XII
THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE {201}

It is not difficult to sympathise with what Dr. Birkbeck aimed at in
founding the College which bears his name. His idea seems to have been,
that whatever a man's calling may be, he is the better for accurate
knowledge of the things with which he deals. This is a sufficiently
obvious statement. But if for the word 'accurate' we substitute
'scientific,' it is no longer a platitude--at least it is not so in the
ears of the semi-educated. For we can still find people who believe in
the "practical man" as opposed to one whom they probably call a
scientist. One would like to know more of the conception of science
formed by the unscientific. They are probably unaware that science is
eminently practical in asserting that only to be true which rests on wide
and accurate generalisation. It is also practical wisdom to hold, as
science does, that truth is temporary and relative, and is in fact merely
the best conclusion that can be drawn in the present state of knowledge.
To many people science is wearisome and somewhat ridiculous, and these
qualities appear in the naturalist of fiction. Thus when even George
Eliot draws a coleopterist, he is made a feeble old man shuffling to and
fro among his ridiculous beetles. And on the French stage I have seen a
botanist treated in the same spirit.

Positiveness and bumptiousness are also supposed to be our attributes.
In the 'New Republic' the characters said to represent Huxley and
Clifford are completely disguised by their pompous pretentiousness.

It is not difficult to describe the ideals of science, but it is only too
easy to fall short of them. It is easy for instance to become a
sectarian, to belong to a school, and to be literally incapable of
fairness towards the opposition. This was plainly seen at the incoming
of evolution, and it was one of the many glories of Sir Charles Lyell
that he could accept the 'Origin of Species,' and that, in the words of
Hooker, he could under-pin his work with an evolutionary foundation and
find his edifice stronger than ever. But we need not consider the
battles of giants; we are much more likely to be concerned with the
mentally dwarfed or deformed--with the dangerous man who makes posit