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