Part 6

Such, then, were some of the scientific results which followed in this case from bringing together mathematical power, experimental sagacity, and manipulative skill, to direct and assist the labours of a body of zealous observers. If therefore we desire, for our own advantage and for the honour of our University, that the Devonshire Laboratory should be successful, we must endeavour to maintain it in living union with the other organs and faculties of our learned body. We shall therefore first consider the relation in which we stand to those mathematical studies which have so long flourished among us, which deal with our own subjects, and which differ from our experimental studies only in the mode in which they are presented to the mind.

There is no more powerful method for introducing knowledge into the mind than that of presenting it in as many different ways as we can. When the ideas, after entering through different gateways, effect a junction in the citadel of the mind, the position they occupy becomes impregnable. Opticians tell us that the mental combination of the views of an object which we obtain from stations no further apart than our two eyes is sufficient to produce in our minds an impression of the solidity of the object seen; and we find that this impression is produced even when we are aware that we are really looking at two flat pictures placed in a stereoscope. It is therefore natural to expect that the knowledge of physical science obtained by the combined use of mathematical analysis and experimental research will be of a more solid, available, and enduring kind than that possessed by the mere mathematician or the mere experimenter.

But what will be the effect on the University, if men Pursuing that course of reading which has produced so many distinguished Wranglers, turn aside to work experiments? Will not their attendance at the Laboratory count not merely as time withdrawn from their more legitimate studies, but as the introduction of a disturbing element, tainting their mathematical conceptions with material imagery, and sapping their faith in the formulae of the textbook? Besides this, we have already heard complaints of the undue extension of our studies, and of the strain put upon our questionists by the weight of learning which they try to carry with them into the Senate-House. If we now ask them to get up their subjects not only by books and writing, but at the same time by observation and manipulation, will they not break down altogether? The Physical Laboratory, we are told, may perhaps be useful to those who are going out in Natural Science, and who do not take in Mathematics, but to attempt to combine both kinds of study during the time of residence at the University is more than one mind can bear.

No doubt there is some reason for this feeling. Many of us have already overcome the initial difficulties of mathematical training. When we now go on with our study, we feel that it requires exertion and involves fatigue, but we are confident that if we only work hard our progress will be certain.

Some of us, on the other hand, may have had some experience of the routine of experimental work. As soon as we can read scales, observe times, focus telescopes, and so on, this kind of work ceases to require any great mental effort. We may perhaps tire our eyes and weary our backs, but we do not greatly fatigue our minds.

It is not till we attempt to bring the theoretical part of our training into contact with the practical that we begin to experience the full effect of what Faraday has called "mental inertia"--not only the difficulty of recognising, among the concrete objects before us, the abstract relation which we have learned from books, but the distracting pain of wrenching the mind away from the symbols to the objects, and from the objects back to the symbols. This however is the price we have to pay for new ideas.

But when we have overcome these difficulties, and successfully bridged over the gulph between the abstract and the concrete, it is not a mere piece of knowledge that we have obtained: we have acquired the rudiment of a permanent mental endowment. When, by a repetition of efforts of this kind, we have more fully developed the scientific faculty, the exercise of this faculty in detecting scientific principles in nature, and in directing practice by theory, is no longer irksome, but becomes an unfailing source of enjoyment, to which we return so often, that at last even our careless thoughts begin to run in a scientific channel.

I quite admit that our mental energy is limited in quantity, and I know that many zealous students try to do more than is good for them. But the question about the introduction of experimental study is not entirely one of quantity. It is to a great extent a question of distribution of energy. Some distributions of energy, we know, are more useful than others, because they are more available for those purposes which we desire to accomplish.

Now in the case of study, a great part of our fatigue often arises, not from those mental efforts by which we obtain the mastery of the subject, but from those which are spent in recalling our wandering thoughts; and these efforts of attention would be much less fatiguing if the disturbing force of mental distraction could be removed.

This is the reason why a man whose soul is in his work always makes more progress than one whose aim is something not immediately connected with his occupation. In the latter case the very motive of which he makes use to stimulate his flagging powers becomes the means of distracting his mind from the work before him.

There may be some mathematicians who pursue their studies entirely for their own sake. Most men, however, think that the chief use of mathematics is found in the interpretation of nature. Now a man who studies a piece of mathematics in order to understand some natural phenomenon which he has seen, or to calculate the best arrangement of some experiment which he means to make, is likely to meet with far less distraction of mind than if his sole aim had been to sharpen his mind for the successful practice of the Law, or to obtain a high place in the Mathematical Tripos.

I have known men, who when they were at school, never could see the good of mathematics, but who, when in after life they made this discovery, not only became eminent as scientific engineers, but made considerable progress in the study of abstract mathematics. If our experimental course should help any of you to see the good of mathematics, it will relieve us of much anxiety, for it will not only ensure the success of your future studies, but it will make it much less likely that they will prove injurious to your health.

But why should we labour to prove the advantage of practical science to the University? Let us rather speak of the help which the University may give to science, when men well trained in mathematics and enjoying the advantages of a well-appointed Laboratory, shall unite their efforts to carry out some experimental research which no solitary worker could attempt.

At first it is probable that our principal experimental work must be the illustration of particular branches of science, but as we go on we must add to this the study of scientific methods, the same method being sometimes illustrated by its application to researches belonging to different branches of science.

We might even imagine a course of experimental study the arrangement of which should be founded on a classification of methods, and not on that of the objects of investigation. A combination of the two plans seems to me better than either, and while we take every opportunity of studying methods, we shall take care not to dissociate the method from the scientific research to which it is applied, and to which it owes its value.

We shall therefore arrange our lectures according to the classification of the principal natural phenomena, such as heat, electricity, magnetism and so on.

In the laboratory, on the other hand, the place of the different instruments will be determined by a classification according to methods, such as weighing and measuring, observations of time, optical and electrical methods of observation, and so on.

The determination of the experiments to be performed at a particular time must often depend upon the means we have at command, and in the case of the more elaborate experiments, this may imply a long time of preparation, during which the instruments, the methods, and the observers themselves, are being gradually fitted for their work. When we have thus brought together the requisites, both material and intellectual, for a particular experiment, it may sometimes be desirable that before the instruments are dismounted and the observers dispersed, we should make some other experiment, requiring the same method, but dealing perhaps with an entirely different class of physical phenomena.

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.

There is a narrow professional spirit which may grow up among men of science, just as it does among men who practise any other special business. But surely a University is the very place where we should be able to overcome this tendency of men to become, as it were, granulated into small worlds, which are all the more worldly for their very smallness. We lose the advantage of having men of varied pursuits collected into one body, if we do not endeavour to imbibe some of the spirit even of those whose special branch of learning is different from our own.

It is not so long ago since any man who devoted himself to geometry, or to any science requiring continued application, was looked upon as necessarily a misanthrope, who must have abandoned all human interests, and betaken himself to abstractions so far removed from the world of life and action that he has become insensible alike to the attractions of pleasure and to the claims of duty.

In the present day, men of science are not looked upon with the same awe or with the same suspicion. They are supposed to be in league with the material spirit of the age, and to form a kind of advanced Radical party among men of learning.

We are not here to defend literary and historical studies. We admit that the proper study of mankind is man. But is the student of science to be withdrawn from the study of man, or cut off from every noble feeling, so long as he lives in intellectual fellowship with men who have devoted their lives to the discovery of truth, and the results of whose enquiries have impressed themselves on the ordinary speech and way of thinking of men who never heard their names? Or is the student of history and of man to omit from his consideration the history of the origin and diffusion of those ideas which have produced so great a difference between one age of the world and another?

It is true that the history of science is very different from the science of history. We are not studying or attempting to study the working of those blind forces which, we are told, are operating on crowds of obscure people, shaking principalities and powers, and compelling reasonable men to bring events to pass in an order laid down by philosophers.

The men whose names are found in the history of science are not mere hypothetical constituents of a crowd, to be reasoned upon only in masses. We recognise them as men like ourselves, and their actions and thoughts, being more free from the influence of passion, and recorded more accurately than those of other men, are all the better materials for the study of the calmer parts of human nature.

But the history of science is not restricted to the enumeration of successful investigations. It has to tell of unsuccessful inquiries, and to explain why some of the ablest men have failed to find the key of knowledge, and how the reputation of others has only given a firmer footing to the errors into which they fell.