SCIEXCE A2TD MAK 



97 



SCIENCE AND MAN. 1 



Br JOHN TYNDALL, F. E. S., LL. D. 



AMAGN'ET attracts iron, but, when we ana- 

 lyze the effect, we learn that the metal is 

 not only attracted but repelled, the final approach 

 to the magnet being due to the difference of two 

 unequal and opposing forces. Social progress is, 

 for the most part, typified by this duplex or polar 

 action. As a general rule, every advance is bal- 

 anced by a partial retreat, every amelioration is 

 associated more or less with deterioration. No 

 great mechanical improvement, for example, is 

 introduced for the benefit of society at large that 

 does not bear hardly upon individuals. Science, 

 like other things, is subject to the operation of 

 this polar law, what is good for it under one as- 

 pect being bad for it under another. 



Science demands above all things personal 

 concentration. Its home is the study of the 

 mathematician, the quiet laboratory of the ex- 

 perimenter, and the cabinet of the meditative 

 observer of Nature. Different atmospheres are 

 required by the man of science, as such, and 

 the man of action. The atmosphere, for ex- 

 ample, which vivifies and stimulates your ex- 

 cellent representative, Mr. Chamberlain, would 

 be death to me. There are organisms which 

 flourish in oxygen — he is one of them. There 

 are also organisms which demand for their 

 duller lives a less vitalizing air — I am one of 

 these. Thus the facilities of social and inter- 

 national intercourse, the railway, the telegraph, 

 and the post-office, which are such undoubted 

 boons to the man of action, react to some extent 

 injuriously on the man of science. Their ten- 

 dency is to break up that concentrativeness 

 which, as I have said, is an absolute necessity to 

 the scientific investigator. 



The men who have most profoundly influ- 

 enced the world from the scientific side have 

 habitually sought isolation. Faraday, at a cer- 

 tain period of his career, formally renounced 

 dining out. Darwin lives apart from the bustle 

 of the world in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer 

 and Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement with 

 the weightiest scientific questions. None of these 

 men, to my knowledge, ever became Presidents 

 of the Midland Institute or of the British Asso- 

 ciation. They could not fail to know that both 

 positions are posts of honor, but they would also 



1 Presidential address, delivered before the Birming-ham 

 and Midland Institute, October 1, 1S77; with additions. 



43 



know that such positions cannot be filled with- 

 out grave disturbance of that sequestered peace 

 which, to them, is a first condition of intellectual 

 fife. 



There is, however, one motive-power in the 

 world which no man, be he a scientific student 

 or otherwise, can afford to treat with indif- 

 ference, and that is the cultivation of right 

 relations with his fellow-men — the performance 

 of his duty, not as an isolated individual, 

 but as a member of society. Such duty often 

 requires the sacrifice of private ease to the pub- 

 lic wishes, if not to the public good. From 

 this point of view, the invitation conveyed to me 

 more than once by your excellent senior vice- 

 president was not to be declined. It was an in- 

 vitation written with the earnestness said to be 

 characteristic of a radical, and certainly with the 

 courtesy characteristic of a gentleman. It quick- 

 ened within me the desire to meet, in a cordial 

 and brotherly spirit, the wish of an institution of 

 which not only Birmingham, but England, may 

 well be proud, and of whose friendliness to my- 

 self I had agreeable evidence in the letters of 

 Mr. Thackray Bunce. 



To look at his picture as a whole a painter 

 requires distance, and to judge of the total 

 scientific achievement of any age the stand- 

 point of a succeeding age is desirable. We 

 may, however, transport ourselves in idea into 

 the future, and thus obtain a grasp, more or 

 less complete, of the science of our time. We 

 sometimes hear it decried and contrasted to its 

 disadvantage with the science of other times. I 

 do not think that this will be the verdict of pos- 

 terity. I think, on the contrary, that posterity 

 will acknowledge that, in the history of science, 

 no higher samples of intellectual conquest are re- 

 corded than those which this age has made its 

 own. One of the most salient of these I pro- 

 pose, with your permission, to make the subject 

 of our consideration during the coming hour. 



It is now generally admitted that the man of to- 

 day is the child and product of incalculable ante- 

 cedent time. His physical and intellectual text- 

 ures have been woven for him during his passage 

 through phases of history and forms of existence 

 which lead the mind back to an abysmal past. 

 One of the qualities which he has derived from 

 that past is the yearning to let in the light of 



