5o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nary thing is that, prior to and during these years, or, to be quite exact, 

 between 1774 and 1828, Britain had contributed at least a dozen dis- 

 coveries of the first magnitude, and as many more of scarcely less im- 

 portance. As you all know for what each stands, I need only mention 

 Priestley, Black, Landen, Davy, Benjamin Thompson, Cavendish, Her- 

 schel, Nicholson and Carlisle, Dalton, Young, Wollaston, Ivory, Bobert 

 Brown, Charles Bell, Brewster, William Smith, Prout, Faraday, George 

 Green and Bowan Hamilton. Still more wonderful, continental leaders 

 were well aware of these contributions, and wont to emphasize them. 

 In 1821, Cuvier gave most generous testimony: and Moll, of Utrecht, 

 repelled Babbage's criticisms with no uncertain sound, remarking, " all 

 must allow that it is an extraordinary circumstance for English char- 

 acter to be attacked by natives and defended by foreigners." 



Although I can not comment upon the ramifications to-night, the 

 puzzle has some obvious causes. The English universities were not 

 scientific organs, but groups of residential colleges. The advancement 

 of science was no primary part of their purpose, precisely as the labori- 

 ous elevation of incompetents to a bare level of possible passability was 

 no primary part of the purpose of the German universities or the 

 French institutes. The colleges cherished their individuality fondly, 

 because they aimed to produce a certain type of man for life — to anneal 

 him by forming his ethos, and to fit him for the exercise of civic influ- 

 ence by giving him a respectable general acquaintance with the " things 

 of the mind." In a word, the English universities did not exist to 

 promote science or learning, any more than the continental organiza- 

 tions existed to provide an educational top-dressing for the sons and 

 daughters of " the people." So, too, of pure thought. The apostolic 

 succession of English philosophers — Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, 

 Hume, the Mills, Spencer, even our contemporaries, Hodgson, Balfour, 

 Shand, Haldane and Bertrand Bussell — do not adorn the universities. 

 Again, the peculiar position of the metropolis, its new university in the 

 melting-pot at this moment, must be taken into account. Lacking the 

 academic center, its scientific societies could not be organized for the 

 advancement of discovery after the style of French and German asso- 

 ciations. 13 These causes, together with the distinctive arrangement of 

 English society a century ago, tended to render the great scientific 

 pioneers lonely figures, sitting loose to the main expressions and modes 

 of national culture. The wails over the condition of English science 

 are traceable as much to this severance, with its absence of constant 

 intercourse and cooperation, as to aught else. How Priestley and Dal- 

 ton and Joule, Young and Davy and Faraday were hampered by these 



13 For example, in the preface to " A New System," Dalton makes the ( to 

 us) astounding statement, that he did not know whether the abstracts of his 

 lectures, left by him for this express purpose, had been published in the Journals 

 of the Royal Institution. Some five years had elapsed since their delivery! 



