204 THE IDEALS OF A SCIENCE SCHOOL 



group of trades or industries, totally outside the 

 universities, and taking from them some of their best 

 brains. The Carnegie Trust is in real danger of 

 being absorbed into this great central scheme. 

 Badly as the governing bodies of our universities 

 have exploited the passion for research and the 

 necessities of those who wish to be able to prosecute 

 it, in Germany under State control matters have 

 probably been much worse. So there is every reason 

 to fear that in future the exploitation of research 

 workers will be taken in hand directly and unblush- 

 ingly by the State. 



It is not too much to claim that the universities 

 owe entirely to modern science the conception that 

 they are something more than professional and 

 technical training schools, and the permanent homes 

 of the learning and culture which has survived in 

 the world the conception that their highest function 

 is creative rather than imitative or didactic. It is 

 the conception of all best worthy of preservation 

 as the basis upon which to build, and I have merely 

 followed here its necessary logical development in 

 attempting to extend it beyond science to the innate 

 aspirations of mankind after beauty and virtue. 

 But little is it yet valued. A motley horde of 

 interests, like the money-changers of old, invade 

 the temple of learning, and each year seems to 

 make the creative element therein more of an 

 intruder, and the seeker after knowledge for its 

 own sake out of place. The creative element in 

 science will never lack a home. Industry and com- 

 merce will house it in a noble and spacious prison 

 with bars of solid gold, even if the universities 

 reject it. 



But there could be no finer memorial to the great 

 dead than to accept frankly and without reservation 

 the fact, of which they themselves are the most con- 



