230 THE ASSOCIATION 



and made meteorological, tidal, and magnetic observa- 

 tions in higher latitudes than many of its predecessors. 

 There follows a period of comparative quiescence 

 in the relations between the Association and the 

 Government. The Association seems now to have 

 relaxed its pressing of the claims of science upon the 

 State for many years ; indeed, until quite recently. 

 It is tempting, though possibly dangerous, to try to 

 assign reasons for this change. Had science tem- 

 porarily won its principal objectives in its relations 

 with the State, and was it, at this moment, briefly 

 resting between two periods of powerful forward move- 

 ment ? Or was the spirit of co-operation, engendered 

 by the Napoleonic wars and the long period of internal 

 dissensions which followed it, at last dying out, to be 

 revived only by the Great War in the present century? 

 Gladstone and Disraeli about this time had reached 

 the high level of power. Silvanus Thompson in his 

 Life of Lord Kelvin quotes, and warmly contests, 

 Gladstone's dictum ' that the present is by no means 

 an age abounding in minds of the first order,' suggest- 

 ing that his attitude toward scientific achievement 

 was one of definite depreciation. It is true that 

 Disraeli in 1873 spoke as follows : 



How much has happened in these fifty years 

 a period more remarkable than any, I will venture 

 to say, in the annals of mankind. I am not thinking 

 of the rise and fall of empires, the change of dynasties, 

 the establishment of governments. I am thinking 

 of those revolutions of science which have had much 

 more effect than any political causes, which have 

 changed the position and prospects of mankind more 

 than all the conquests and all the codes, and all the 

 legislators that ever lived.' 



