RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC WEAL. 245 



of science which a broad education would surely inspire, our men of 

 riches and leisure who advance the boundaries of scientific knowledge 

 could not be counted on the fingers as they now are, when we think 

 of Boyle, Cavendish, Napier, Lyell, Murchison, and Darwin, but 

 would be as numerous as our statesmen and orators. Statesmen, 

 without a following of the people who share their views and back 

 their work, would be feeble indeed. But, while England has never 

 lacked leaders in science, they have too few followers to risk a rapid 

 march. We might create an army to support our generals in science, 

 as Germany has done, and as France is now doing, if education in 

 this country would only mold itself to the needs of a scientific age. 

 It is with this feeling that Horace Mann wrote : " The action of the 

 mind is like the action of fire : one billet of wood will hardly burn 

 alone, though as dry as the sun and northwest wind can make it, and 

 though placed in a current of air ; ten such billets will burn well to- 

 gether, but a hundred will create a heat fifty times as intense as ten 

 — will make a current of air to fan their own flame, and consume 

 even greenness itself." 



VI. Abstract Science the Condition for Progress. — The 

 subject of my address has been the relations of science to the public 

 weal. That is a very old subject to select for the year 1885. I began 

 it by quoting the words of an illustrious prince, the consort of our 

 Queen, who addressed us on the same subject from this platform twenty- 

 six years ago. But he was not the first prince who saw how closely 

 science is bound up with the welfare of states. Ali, the son-in-law of 

 Mohammed, the fourth successor to the caliphate, urged upon his fol- 

 lowers that men of science and their disciples give security to human 

 progress. Ali loved to say, "• Eminence in science is the highest of 

 honors," and " He dies not who gives life to learning." In addressing 

 you upon texts such as these, my purpose was to show how unwise it 

 is for England to lag in the onward march of science when most other 

 European powers are using the resources of their states to promote 

 higher education and to advance the boundaries of knowledge, Eng- 

 lish Governments alone fail to grasp the fact that the competition of 

 the world has become a competition in intellect. Much of this indif- 

 ference is due to our systems of education. I have ill fulfilled my pur- 

 pose if, in claiming for science a larger share in public education, I 

 have in any way depreciated literature, art, or philosophy, for every 

 subject which adds to culture aids in human development. I only con- 

 tend that in public education there should be a free play to the scien- 

 tific faculty, so that the youths who possess it should learn the rich- 

 ness of their possession during the educative process. The same 

 faculties which make a man great in any walk of life — strong love of 

 truth, high imagination tempered by judgment, a vivid memory which 

 can co-ordinate other facts with those under immediate consideration 

 — all these are qualities which the poet, the philosopher, the man of 



