86
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
Aristotle was a marvellous observer of Nature, and not less
marvellous in his power of systematising, and he did his work so
well that for centuries men were content to ask what Aristotle
said, not what Nature said. It needed the spirit of the Novum
Organum to send men back again to Nature. The same danger
is abroad now ; we may make the labours of men as great or
greater than Aristotle a hindrance and not a help for progress, if
we are content to follow merely what they have thought and done,
and never learn to do or think for ourselves.
The great difficulty lies in examinations; it is comparatively
easy to find out how much acquired knowledge a paper shews ;
it is most difficult to set new problems and make sure that the
answer is original.
Now, of that fundamental knowledge of observation and
classification on which any real scientific teaching must be based,
there is no better source than Natural History and Botany, and
other allied subjects, when learned direct from Nature. There
are some who affect to despise the collector—the mere collector
may indeed be a useless pedant, and so may be the mere anything
else. But the collector who will bring to bear on other subjects
the keen observation of nature and of the differences of natural
objects ; who has grasped the principles underlying systems of
classification, and has learned the habit of applying those prin-
ciples to particular instances ; is provided with the essential
characteristics for research, and from the only true teacher,
Nature herself.
There is another, and it may be more important, reason for
studying Nature at first and not at second-hand. It is very
possible to feel, at any rate, as if one has reached the limit of
second-hand knowledge; but the true and reverent student of
Nature herself learns the truer lesson of how much . remains
unlearned by the wisest—the infinite littleness of our highest
knowledge.