RELATION OF SCIENCE TO HUMAN LIFE—SEDGWICK. 681 
injustice, in my opinion, to abolish it; but there is another way in 
which the difficulty can be met, and that is the way which has been 
adopted by the wise and farseeing founders of the Imperial College, 
namely, by the combination of a school of science with a school of 
technology. If you have incorporated in your school of science a 
school of applied science, and if you at the same time take care that 
none but able men are allowed to enter the research grade, and if you 
establish, as you must do if you honestly work your school, a con- 
nection with the great industrial interests of the country, you have 
all that is necessary for the disposal of those men who, for whatever 
reason, find themselves unable to follow a life of pure science. As 
is well known, the faculty for pure, apparently useless, research in 
science is often possessed by men without any aptitude for practical 
application of science or desire of practical success and the wealth 
which practical success brings, while, on the contrary, many minds of 
the highest order can not work at all without the stimulus of the 
thought of the practical outcome of their labor. 
In our college there is room both for those with the highest 
gifts for pure scientific research and for those with the inventive 
faculty so important in the arts, or with the knowledge and ability 
for controlling and organizing great industrial enterprises; and, 
what is more, the combination of the two types of mind in the same 
school can not but be of the greatest advantage to both, not only on 
account of the atmosphere which will be created, so favorable to intel- 
lectual effort, but also because good must result from the contact in 
one school of minds whose ultimate aim is to probe the mysteries of 
nature and to acquire control over her forces. 
As Professor Nichols has well said in pointing out the dependence 
of technology on science: 
The history of technology shows that the essential condition under which 
useful applications are likely to originate is scientific productiveness. A coun- 
try that has many investigators will have many inventors also. * * * 
Where science is, there will its by-product technology be also. Communities 
having the most thorough fundamental knowledge of pure science will show 
the greatest output of really practical inventions. Peoples who get their knowl- 
edge at second hand must be content to follow. Where sound scientific con- 
ceptions are the common property of a nation, the wasteful efforts of the half- 
informed will be least prevalent. 
These are sound conclusions, and experience has shown that if the 
terms are interchanged the same remarks may be made with equal 
truth of the good influence which results to a school of science from 
its association with a school of technology. 
Before concluding, it may be well to say a word as to the origin of 
the great imperial institution in the interests of which we are met 
here to-day. It may justly be described as the natural and necessary 
outcome of the scheme for scientific instruction which was originated 
