It has now long
been recognised that, if a man wishes to be a chemist, it is not only
necessary that he should read chemical books and attend chemical
lectures, but that he should actually perform the fundamental
experiments in the laboratory for himself, and thus learn exactly what
the words which he finds in his books and hears from his teachers, mean.
If he does not do so, he may read till the crack of doom, but he will
never know much about chemistry. That is what every chemist will tell
you, and the physicist will do the same for his branch of science. The
great changes and improvements in physical and chemical scientific
education, which have taken place of late, have all resulted from the
combination of practical teaching with the reading of books and with the
hearing of lectures. The same thing is true in Biology. Nobody will ever
know anything about Biology except in a dilettante "paper-philosopher"
way, who contents himself with reading books on botany, zoology, and the
like; and the reason of this is simple and easy to understand. It is
that all language is merely symbolical of the things of which it treats;
the more complicated the things, the more bare is the symbol, and the
more its verbal definition requires to be supplemented by the
information derived directly from the handling, and the seeing, and the
touching of the thing symbolised:--that is really what is at the bottom
of the whole matter.
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