Dr. Waldstein's Lecture.

Professor Goodwin introduced Dr. Waldstein to a very attentive and interested audience. Last evening the lecturer spoke to the following effect.

There are three dangers into which young students of archaeology are apt to fall and they consist in (1) a misconception of what constitutes thoroughness of research; (2) the detrimental predominance of the collector's frame of mind, and lastly the ill-judged and premarure introduction of allied studies into archaeology. People think it necessary to go back into the prehistoric development of Greek social life and art when they begin to teach archaeology. This would be more logical if the science were a more firmly established one. As it is, the true method of research seems to be to make a study of historical facts and examples of Greek art that we have before our eyes and from them to deduce theories as to the early stages of its developments, of which we have no tangible remnants.

Of late it has become usual to form great generalisations about the origin of art, and the danger of following them in scientific research is that the student will leave the really important things that are at his door unexamined, while he follows out a theory that fletters his vanity and gives unbounded sway to his imagination and to his ingenuity. The safest method therefore is to base our observations and draw our conclusions from the actual historical facts at our disposal.