SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 159 



cession by inheritance is thus the principle of social rigidity ; while 

 succession by efficiency is the principle of social plasticity. 



Though to make cooperation possible, and therefore to facilitate 

 social growth, there must be organization, yet the organization formed 

 impedes further growth ; since further growth implies reorganization, 

 which the existing organization resists. 



So that while, at each stage, better immediate results may be 

 achieved by completing organization, they must be at the exj)ense of 

 better ultimate results. These are to be achieved by carrying organi- 

 zation at each stage no further than is needful for the orderly carrying 

 on of social actions. 



-- 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE.* 



By Professor T. H. HUXLEY, F. E. S. 



SIX years ago, as some of my present hearers may remember, I had 

 the privilege of addi'essing a large assemblage of the inhabitants 

 of this city, who had gathered together to do honor to the memory of 

 their famous townsman, Joseph Priestley ; and, if any satisfaction 

 attaches to posthumous glory, we may hope that the manes of the 

 burned-out philosopher were then finally ajjpeased. No man, however, 

 who is endowed with a fair share of common sense and not more than 

 a fair share of vanity, will identify either contemj)orary or posthumous 

 fame with the highest good ; and Priestley's life leaves no doubt that 

 he, at any rate, set a much higher value upon the advancement of 

 knowledge and the promotion of that freedom of thought which is at 

 once the cause and the consequence of intellectual progress. 



Hence I am disposed to think that, if Priestley could be among us 

 to-day, the occasion of our meeting would afford him even greater 

 pleasui'e than the proceedings which celebrated the centenary of his 

 chief discovery. The kindly heart would be moved, the high sense 

 of social duty would be satisfied, by the spectacle of well-earned 

 wealth, neither squandered in tawdry luxury and vainglorious show, 

 nor scattered with the careless charity which blesses neither him that 

 gives nor him that takes, but expended in the execution of a well-con- 

 sidered plan for the aid of present and future generations of those who 

 are willing to help themselves. 



We shall all be of one mind thus far. But it is needful to share 

 Priestley's keen interest in physical science ; to have learned, as he 

 had learned, the value of scientific training in fields of inquiry appar- 

 ently far remote from physical science ; to appreciate, as he would 



* An address delivered on the occasion of the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's Science 

 College, at Birmingham, England, on October 1, 1880. 



