BRAIN-POWER AND HISTORY. 73 



existence of this country, as the great commercial nation, depends upon it. 

 ... It depends very much upon what we are doing now, at the beginning of 

 the twentieth century, whether at its end we shall continue to maintain our 

 supremacy or even equality with our great commercial and manufacturing 

 rivals. 



All this refers to our industries. We are not suffering because 

 trade no longer follows the flag as in the old days, but because 

 trade follows the brains, and our manufacturers are too apt to be 

 careless in securing them. In one chemical establishment in Ger- 

 many, 400 doctors of science, the best the universities there can turn 

 out, have been employed at different times in late years. In the 

 United States the most successful students in the higher teaching 

 centers are snapped up the moment they have finished their course of 

 training, and put into charge of large concerns, so that the idea has got 

 abroad that youth is the password of success in American industry. 

 It has been forgotten that the latest product of the highest scientific 

 education must necessarily be young, and that it is the training and 

 not the age which determines his employment. In Britain, on the 

 other hand, apprentices who can pay high premiums are too often pre- 

 ferred to those who are well educated, and the old rule-of-thumb 

 processes are preferred to new developments — a conservatism too often 

 depending upon the master 's own want of knowledge. 



I should not be doing my duty if I did not point out that the defeat 

 of our industries one after another, concerning which both Lord Kose- 

 bery and Mr. Chamberlain express their anxiety, is by no means the 

 only thing we have to consider. The matter is not one which concerns 

 our industrial classes only, for knowledge must be pursued for its own 

 sake, and since the full life of a nation with a constantly increasing 

 complexity, not only of industrial, but of high national aims, depends 

 upon the universal presence of the scientific spirit — in other words, brain 

 power — our whole national life is involved. 



The present awakening in relation to the nation's real needs is 

 largely due to the warnings of men of science. But Mr. Balfour's 

 terrible Manchester picture of our present educational condition * 

 shows that the warning which has been going on now for more than 

 fiifty years has not been forcible enough; but if my contention that 

 other reorganizations besides that of our education are needed is well 

 founded, and if men of science are to act the part of good citizens in 

 taking their share in endeavoring to bring about a better state of 

 things, the question arises, has the neglect of their warnings so far 

 been due to the way in which these have been given? 



* " The existing educational system of this country is chaotic, is ineflFectual, 

 is utterly behind the age, makes us the laughing-stock of every advanced nation 

 in Europe and America, puts us behind, not only our American cousins, but the 

 German and the Frenchman and the Italian." — Times, October 15, 1902. 



