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our present difficulties ; and urged the application of science in its broadest sense 

 to our national affairs in the future. 



Mr. Fisher, Minister of Education, speaking on science in education and 

 industry, said that while the practical teaching of science in our schools was quite 

 as efficiently carried out as in France and Germany, we had not yet found a form 

 of scientific instruction which would appeal to the general mass of children who 

 were not destined to a scientific career. The application of science to industry 

 was an urgent necessity, and a very satisfactory feature of the present situation 

 was that there existed the Imperial Trust for Scientific and Industrial Research, a 

 Committee armed with a large and liberal fund, and formed for the purpose of 

 co-operating with industries and with associations of industries for the development 

 of industrial research. 



Mr. G. H. Wells, while condemning compulsory Greek and Latin for the sake 

 of the language alone, said that the beauty, the wisdom, and the wonder of the 

 Greek literature could not be denied ; but the classical scholar should not be 

 isolated from the scientist, as at present. There should be two distinct educational 

 courses, the one leading up to the fullest and completest knowledge of Greek and 

 Latin, and the other leading up to scientific studies ; but between the two there 

 should be a connecting link, that of history and philosophy in English. 



Verbatim reports of the speeches have been published in the June number of 

 the Journal of the British Science Guild. 



A Science Guild for the Union of South Africa » 



We have received an eloquent article from a distinguished scientific Civil 

 Servant in South Africa advocating the formation of a Science Guild for that 

 Dominion, and quite agree with the writer's suggestion. The author begins : 



"Many definitions of the meaning of Science can be given. The one that suits 

 me to use at the moment is that Science seeks to discover the relation between 

 cause and effect. In the inorganic world the scientist is already certain that like 

 causes produce like effects, although the relation in any particular case may not 

 yet be fully explained or even in its real essence may be undiscoverable. In the 

 organic world the scientist, if not so positive, has a faith that like causes produce 

 like effects. If he fails in his proof in individual cases, he appeals to the mass 

 effect by means of statistics, for accidental deaths, births, suicides, etc., in the 

 gross seem to follow certain if still obscure laws. The test of scientific knowledge 

 is, in the end, its power of prediction. The scientist feels rather than asserts that 

 if his mind could grasp all the causes he would be able to predict all the effects. 

 The victories of Science in this regard are already striking and numerous, and the 

 present rate of scientific progress is not only great but is accelerating rapidly. 



" Many men of scientific eminence saw in the growth of Germany, both in the 

 industrial and military senses, causes at work which must in their due time produce 

 their effects. But they were talking to a generation which would not listen. The 

 uneducated man or the man trained exclusively in classical learning has no real 

 conception of causality — the world he lives in is rather one in which chance rules, 

 or perhaps one in which instinct is valued more highly than reason. 



" But the scientist is not blameless. Although some scientifically trained men 

 raised their voices, the multitude of them acquiesced in a policy of laissez-faire, 

 and joined the rabble in the scramble for loaves and fishes. Although they knew 

 that Mammon was only an idol, they did not refuse to bend the knee with the 

 crowd. For this state of affairs the watertight or even sectarian methods of 

 scientists are greatly to blame. They banded themselves into specialised societies, 

 each limited to the problems of some one branch of knowledge ; or when a society 

 took cognisance of all branches, it became either too exclusive — a scientific 

 hierarchy or close corporation — or it became commonplace. 



" The result was that as a body, especially within our Empire, scientists were 



