SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 169 



mastery of principles and that habit of dealing with facts which is 

 given by long-continued and well-directed purely scientific training in 

 the physical and the chemical laboratory. So that there really is no 

 question as to the necessity of purely scientific discipline, even if the 

 work of the college were limited by the narrowest interpretation of its 

 stated aims. And, as to the desirableness of a wider culture than that 

 yielded by science alone, it is to be recollected that the improvement 

 of manufacturing processes is only one of the conditions which con- 

 tribute to the prosperity of industry. Industry is a means and not an 

 end ; and mankind work only to get something which they want. 

 What that something is depends partly on their innate, and partly on 

 their acquired, desires. If the wealth resulting from prosperous in- 

 dustry is to be spent upon the gratification of unworthy desires, if 

 the inci-easing perfection of manufacturing processes is to be accom- 

 panied by an increasing debasement of those who carry them on, I do 

 not see the good of industry and prosperity. 



Now, it is perfectly true that men's views of what is desirable 

 depend upon their characters ; and that the innate proclivities to which 

 we give that name are not touched by any amount of instruction. 

 But it does not follow that even mere intellectual education may not, 

 to an indefinite extent, modify the practical manifestation of the char- 

 acter of men in their actions, by supplying them with motives unknown 

 to the ignorant. A pleasure-loving character will have pleasure of 

 some sort ; but, if you give him the choice, he may prefer pleasures 

 which do not degrade him to those which do. And this choice is 

 offered to every man, who possesses in literary or artistic culture a 

 never-failing source of pleasures, which are neither withered by age, 

 nor staled by custom, nor embittered in the recollection by the pangs 

 of self-reproach. 



If the institution opened to-day fulfills the intention of its founder, 

 the picked intelligences among all classes of the population of this 

 district will pass through it. No child born in Birmingham, hence- 

 forward, if he have the capacity to profit by the opportunities offered 

 to him first in the primary and other schools, and afterward in the 

 Scientific College, need fail to obtain, not merely the instruction, but 

 the culture most appropriate to the conditions of his life. 



Within these walls, the future employer and the future artisan may 

 sojourn together for a while, and carry through all their lives the 

 stamp of the influences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, it is 

 not beside the mark to remind you that the prosperity of industry 

 depends not merely upon the improvement of manufacturing processes, 

 not merely upon the ennobling of the individual character, but upon 

 a third condition, namely, a clear understanding of the conditions of 

 social life on the part of both the capitalist and the operative, and 

 their agreement upon common principles of social action. They must 

 learn that social phenomena are as much the expression of natural laws 



