/'//A' BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 485 



to participate in its discussions! Or imagine Mr. Speaker Cannon 

 as president of the section of economics and taking a real part in the 

 debates! This lack of touch hetween scientific men and politicians in 

 our country as compared with the older European countries is due to 

 several causes. The high places in political life are in the older na- 

 tions mainly in the hands of university men (a process that is going 

 on with us), but more than this the profession of politics in them is 

 not incompatible with the spirit and work of the scholar. 



Jefferson more than any other president was a representative of 

 the science of his time. During a part of his first term he was presi- 

 dent of the American Philosophical Society and set apart some of 

 the rooms in the executive mansion for the study of fossils, particu- 

 larly of those of mammoths. It is safe to say that no other president 

 since his day has found the time to give any serious thought to the 

 encouragement of science or of education as a part of national devel- 

 opment. 



Perhaps the criticisms which Jefferson called down upon himself 

 by his scientific tendencies have not served to encourage other presi- 

 dents. His geological studies were pointed to, about the time of the 

 Louisiana purchase, with great bitterness by his critics as indicating 

 those radical and godless tendencies which culminated in the act of 

 purchase. There is a poem of William Cullen Bryant on this trans- 

 action which is addressed to Jefferson and which begins 



■b' 



Go wretch, resign the presidential chair; 

 Reveal thy secret purpose, foul or fair; 



In the course of the poem ' frogs " are significantly made to rhyme 

 with ' Louisianian bogs.' The fact that the poet was but thirteen at 

 the time may be taken as a measure of the sharpness of the criticism 

 which awaits a president who compromises himself by too great in- 

 timacy with science. It is easier, if not safer, for a president to look 

 after the post offices and let science take care of herself. 



Mr. Balfour himself did not altogether escape this sort of criticism. 

 His address had for a title ' Reflections Suggested by the New Theory 

 of Matter.' The opposition papers were not slow to suggest that the 

 prime minister and practical ruler of a great commercial country could 

 spend his time to better advantage than in discoursing transcendental 

 philosophy to admiring audiences of scientists ! 



The critics were so far right in terming Mr. Balfour's address 

 philosophical rather than scientific. By disposition and by education 

 Mr. Balfour is a speculative philosopher rather than a man of science, 

 and his address leaned strongly toward that mildly pessimistic atti- 

 tude of the speculative philosopher, which balances in a nice way this 

 and that conclusion, and goes no whither. 



