NATURE AND MAN. 435 



NATURE AND MAN.* 



BY EDWIN RAY LANKESTER, M.A., HON. D.Sc, F.R.S., 



HON. FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, DIRECTOR OF THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENTS OF THE 

 BRITISH MUSEUM, LATE LINACRE PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 



IT is the pride of our ancient universities that they are largely, if 

 not exclusively, frequented by young men of the class who are 

 going to take an active part in the public affairs of the country — 

 either as politicians and statesmen, as governors of remote colonies, or 

 as leaders of the great professions of the church, the law and medicine. 

 It would seem, then, that if these universities attached a greater, even 

 a predominant, importance to the studies which lead to the knowledge 

 and control of nature, the schools would follow their example, and 

 that the governing class of the country would become acquainted with 

 the urgent need for more knowledge of the kind, and for the immediate 

 application in public affairs of that knowledge which exists. 



It would seem that in Great Britain, at any rate, it would not be 

 necessary, were the universities alive to the situation, to await the 

 pressure of democracy, but that a better and more rapid mode of de- 

 velopment would obtain; the influential and trusted leaders of the 

 community would set the example in seeking and using for the good 

 of the state the new knowledge of nature. The world has seen with 

 admiration and astonishment the entire people of Japan follow the 

 example of its governing class in the almost sudden adoption of the 

 knowledge and control of nature as the purpose of national education 

 and the guide of state administration. It is possible that in a less 

 rapid and startling manner our old universities may, at no distant 

 date, influence the intellectual life of the more fortunate of our fellow 

 citizens, and consequently of the entire community. The weariness 

 which is so largely expressed at the present day in regard to human 

 effort — whether it be in the field of politics, of literature, or of other 

 art, or in relation to the improvement of social organization and the 

 individual life — is possibly due to the fact that we have exhausted the 

 old sources of inspiration, and have not yet learnt to believe in the 

 new. The ' return to nature,' which is sometimes vaguely put for- 

 ward as a cure for the all-pervading ' taedium ' of this age, is perhaps 

 an imperfect expression of the truth that it is time for civilized man 

 not to return to the ' state of nature/ but to abandon his retrospective 



* Concluding part of the Romanes Lecture, delivered in the Sheldonian 

 Theatre, Oxford, on June 14, 1905. 



