Our principal work, however, in the Laboratory must be to acquaint
ourselves with all kinds of scientific methods, to compare them, and
to estimate their value. It will, I think, be a result worthy of our
University, and more likely to be accomplished here than in any
private laboratory, if, by the free and full discussion of the
relative value of different scientific procedures, we succeed in
forming a school of scientific criticism, and in assisting the
development of the doctrine of method.
But admitting that a practical acquaintance with the methods of
Physical Science is an essential part of a mathematical and scientific
education, we may be asked whether we are not attributing too much
importance to science altogether as part of a liberal education.
Fortunately, there is no question here whether the University should
continue to be a place of liberal education, or should devote itself
to preparing young men for particular professions. Hence though some
of us may, I hope, see reason to make the pursuit of science the main
business of our lives, it must be one of our most constant aims to
maintain a living connexion between our work and the other liberal
studies of Cambridge, whether literary, philological, historical or
philosophical.
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