EVOLUTION AND MANKIND. 303 



classics, to \hv stiulv of wliich an undue proportion of time was 

 giveu. Far lie it from me to discourage the study of the classics, 

 for I am glad that I received such a training myself. Htnvever, 

 the majority of pupils passing through such a course hecome 

 merely acquisitive, their creative ])owers have never heen de- 

 veloped, and they ha\e no idea of relative proportions in Nature, 

 for they know little of science with its wide outlook and forward 

 view. Unfortunately, also, the accjuisitive or possessive mind 

 may, perhaps unconsciously, tend to view the afifairs of life with 

 a somewhat superior air. 



In connection with education, the recent views of the well- 

 known mathematician, Prdfessor Whitehead, may prove illumina- 

 ting: 



Wiien one considers in its, length and in its I)readtli the inipoitance of 

 this question itt education ot a nation's young, the broken lives, the 

 defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous 

 inertia with which it is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself 

 a savage rage. In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute : the 

 race which does not valtie trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your 

 heroism, not all \our social cliarm. not all your wit. n.ot all your victories 

 on land or at sea. can move back the linger of fate. To-day we maintain 

 ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more 

 step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment wliich will then be 

 pronounced on the uneducated.'" 



Science, of a broad and generous tyjje, must l)e the vitalising 

 agent in education. It should not l)e too narrow or tinged with 

 immediate economic expectations. Scientific research must be 

 pursued for its own sake, and the economic applications will 

 follow automatically, as has so often happened in the past. 

 Recently, it has been aptly stated that 



Tn the changing order of affairs it is not so certain that the conven- 

 tional governing type of man will be able to deal with the new relationships 

 which are in rapid process of development. .\t any rate, men of this kind 

 are in full pcnvcr in the State, in Government offices, and in many 

 business affairs, and they have not prevented strikes, or wars, or 

 revolutions: and at the moment their methods and aims and powers 

 are in a fair way towards paralysis. Who can tell whether the men of 

 research will not be called from their laboratories to save and reconstruct 

 the State ?t 



Again. Sir Alfred Keogh, till recently Director-General of the 

 Army Medical Services of Great Biritain, said in London on 

 Feburary 2/. tqi8: — 



I hold, and always have held, that in this comitry, and perliaps in this 

 country alone, administration has been absolutely divorced from science, 

 that the administrator, as a rule, is ignorant of any particular branch 

 of science, that he has had. as a rule, no scientific training, and neither 

 thinks nor acts scientifically. 1 attribute many of our national short- 

 comings lo tliis fact. 



It is obvious, therefore, that government by trained men. 

 not by amateurs, is necessary in a State ruled according to natural 



* A. N. Whitehead : " The Organisation of Thought : Educational and 

 Scientific." pp. 27, 28. 



■J Xaturc. March 7. igiS. 



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