

NOTES 675 



caucuses. These actually have the power of commanding that a constituency 

 shall elect one of only two or three candidates previously allowed by the caucuses 

 to stand ; so that the field of selection offered to the British voter largely contains 

 political schemers, while the best men in the country are generally automatically 

 excluded. That fraud, the two-party system, is one of the evil results of this 

 monstrous anomaly— which produces the rule of the tongue rather than of the 

 brain. 



Regarding the War, in the Times of February 8 the Poet Laureate narrates 

 that in 191 3 a Prussian informed an American that when the Germans had con- 

 quered England they would impose an indemnity of £20,000,000,000, and would 

 extract it from the people by aid of the lash. But this amiable design dates from 

 much further back ; for I remember that when I was at school, during, or shortly 

 after, the Franco-German War, our German Master said something of the same 

 kind to our Mathematical Master, who replied, laughing, " Oh, our police force 

 will be enough to keep you out ! " The fact is, that the successful German cam- 

 paigns against Austria, Denmark, and France taught them that scientific warfare 

 may be a paying game. That is, the whole German nation has been secretly at 

 heart a nation of brigands for the last fifty years, and fat, unscientific England has 

 long been their ultimate objective. As Mr. Bridges suggests, they missed their 

 spring in the present war only because we joined in the fray before they had the 

 time to crush France. If we had not done so, they would next have absorbed 

 Holland and Denmark, and would then have gorged our millions at leisure. 

 Perhaps the principal sorrow which the war has inflicted upon humanity has been 

 the revelation which it has given of the unutterable beastliness of a large pro- 

 portion of the human race — and the blindness and stupidity of another portion. 



In referring to the able reply which Dr. Charles A. Mercier published in 

 Science Progress of July 1916 to an educational manifesto, the Australian 

 Manufacturer of October 28, 1916, makes some of the best remarks on the 

 matter which I have seen. It says: "Dr. Mercier has little difficulty in completely 

 demolishing the foolish contentions of the advocates of what is called classical 

 education, but what is really monkish education ; for it was the monks of the 

 middle ages, and not the great thinkers of Greece and Rome, who, instead of 

 using their own brains, were content to spend their lives copying the writings of 

 dead thinkers. The great Greeks thought for themselves. And the thinkers 

 of one age did not hesitate to reject the teachings of the thinkers of other ages. 

 Socrates did not flinch from rejecting the popular teachings of his time. Nor did 

 the ancient Greeks waste their intellectual energy acquiring a knowledge of dead 

 languages. Their own great language was good enough for them, and ours ought 

 to be good enough for us. Certainly, in these days, when there is keen industrial 

 competition between the nations, and when science is proving itself to be so 

 helpful to industry, we cannot afford to devote to a knowledge of words the time 

 and thought that ought to be given to a knowledge of things. Science is of 

 supreme importance, because it helps us to earn our bread — to live and to prosper. 

 And since life must come before art and culture — for there can be no art and 

 culture if there is no life — the claims of science are primary. . . . There is nothing 

 in science, which is merely a deeper and more accurate knowledge of nature, 

 calculated to make a man a materialist in any objectionable sense. We know, as 

 a matter of fact, that the great modern scientists were kindly, loving gentle men. 

 In private life Darwin, Huxley, Lord Lister, Tyndall, Faraday — men whose souls 

 were steeped in science — were all pure-minded, pure-living, gentle souls, a fact 

 which gives the lie to those who talk as if the nation will go to the devil if it 



