It is, I think, of happy augury that it should have been found possible to arrange a joint meeting of members of the local branches of the Classical and Mathematical Associations, as well as members of the Yorkshire Natural Science Association, to hear a few words about Greek science. No doubt the classical or humane studies can stand by- themselves and so (in a way) can the study of science based only on good English: but I venture to think that they are both much stronger when they stand side by side and support one another. The idea that there is any necessary antagonism or opposition of interests between them is surely unfounded, and there is room for both in our system of education. It is a mistake to suppose that in our school education there is not time for the one or the other; the question is really one of using the time that there is to the best advantage. No doubt schoolboys in the past have wasted much time in the perfunctory learning of Latin and Greek. It has often been remarked that, while a boy was more or less continuously learning Latin and Greek from the age of nine or ten till he went to the University, a girl who only began Latin and Greek at, say, fifteen or sixteen managed to catch up the boy and take a place alongside him in Part I. of the Classical Tripos. It was therefore probably the inefficient or uninteresting way in which the boy used to be taught Greek and Latin that caused the waste of time. If the subjects were made sufficiently attractive and the bogey of compulsion were removed, there is no reason why the boy of good ability should not during his school years acquire a good working knowledge of both classics and science, as well as of the indispensable amount of modern languages. And, if the boy’s interest can be aroused sufficiently to make him take kindly to Greek and Latin on the one side and mathematics and science on the other, I am clear that each branch will help the other and be better done.

Selection plays an important part in the life of the individual. It is a fundamental process which he must be able to apply in order to understand the world into which he is born. An individual placed amidst any set of circumstances does not assimilate the whole of them. He does not act like a camera plate, which reproduces automatically every feature of an external situation. The complex mental image which he forms from his surrounding circumstances is not an exact copy of the original environment.