128 



NATURE 



[March 23, 1911 



.•i(lvantaj»e that, whilst these manufactures were advancing 

 by leaps and bounds during the century succeeding the 

 industrial revolution (which 1 suppose may be dated about 

 i7(>o) there was no movement in the educational world for 

 a general dissemination of scientific knowledge and skill. 

 During that perifxl several misconceptions took deep root 

 in the Knglish mind. The achievements of Arkwright the 

 barber, Hargreaves the weaver, Crompton the farmer, 

 Watt the instrument maker, Cartwright the clergyman, 

 Stephenson the fireman, .Murdoik the millwright, and of 

 ill that illustrious group — their great and fundamental 

 .uliievemrnts created an overwhelming belief that the self- 

 laught inventor was destined to be the only important 

 pioneer in industrial discovery, and to this day a young 

 man brought up on a diet of grammar and Samuel Smiles 

 might well despair of contributing anything of moment to 

 the service of industry, unless, indeed, he happened to be 

 'xceptionally poor and to have nttended no more showy a 

 place of education than a night-school. 



If the universities had set themselves to send a current 

 of science through our schools at the time when the direct 

 utility of scientific knowledge and of scientific method was 

 becoming demonstrable in the industrial world, we should, 

 I think, be in a very different position to-day, and our 

 universities would hold a very different place in the esteem 

 t>f our countrymen. It is this historical retrospect, and 

 the experience of the frantic and wasteful struggles in my 

 own lifetime on the part of the worker to come to terms 

 with the thinker, that have made me realise the dangers 

 that attend academic seclusion, and have left me well con- 

 tent that my lot as a university teacher is cast within ear- 

 shot of the throb and hum of busy workshops. 



Of all that we have lost in the course of the events I 

 have described, nothing is more difficult to retrieve than 

 confidence in the practical usefulness of university science. 

 We are suspected at every turn of trying to elude the 

 practical man, and to betake ourselves to studies and 

 impart information the glory of which lies in its detach- 

 ment from all things mundane and remunerative. We 

 have engendered the suspicion that we are intellectually 

 exclusive, and that we do not understand, or sympathise 

 with, the practical point of view. A better understanding 

 between us is, I think, a matter of the greatest national 

 importance, and it has seemed to me that if a better under- 

 standing is to be attained, it is incumbent on the universi- 

 ties to go out so far as ever they can to meet the legiti- 

 mate claims of the industrial community, and to bring 

 their studies deliberately into the closest possible relation- 

 ship with the industrial arts. 



I think I may claim that in this university we have 

 shown no lack of courage in doing so. In spite of a good 

 deal of academic apprehension and distrust, not always 

 kindly expressed, from outside critics, we have established 

 departments of work for the explicit purpose of furthering 

 the special pursuits of industry, much in the same wav 

 and in the same spirit as schools of law, medicine, and 

 theology were established in bygone days. 



-Another thing, on which 1 would lay the greatest stress, 

 is that we have secured in the direction of our university 

 as a whole, and of these special departments in particular, 

 the active cooperation of men of business and of repre- 

 sentatives of the particular industries concerned. I do not 

 look upon these steps as a gracious concession, still less 

 as a sordid opportunism. I believe thev secure the best 

 interests of thought as surely as I hope they will serve 

 the most immediate needs of work. 



No one who has studied the history of science can be 

 ignorant of the fact that science has its roots and has 

 gained its greatest impulse in the practical avocations of 

 mankind. Chemistry was born in foundries and phar- 

 macies, and nearly every great advance can be traced to 

 some industrial impulse. I suppose the greatest achieve- 

 ments in chemistry were those of Lavoisier. How did 

 they arise? I believe I am not wrong in saving that it 

 was in the preparation of his prize essay on the best mode 

 of lighting the streets of Paris. Beginning with a con- 

 sideration of the best form of lamp, the most efifective 

 form of reflectors, the most suitable shape of oil-containers, 

 Lavoisier passed to the study of combustion, and finding 

 ^V'S^Jo^^hings like oil and tallow too complex to reveal 

 the fundamental nature of the process, he betook himself 

 to simpler things like phosphorus and zinc, and so was 

 NO. 2160, VOL. 86] 



led to the train of discoveries which constitute the founda- 

 tions of modern chemistry. ** It was," as M. le Chatelier 

 has said, " this constant preoccupation with practical 

 questions that enabled Lavoisier to escape without effort 

 f^rom the fictions and conventions amid which contemporary 

 chemists were merely marking time." 



I have given you but one of innumerable examples to 

 illustrate a truth that we who profess science should never 

 be permitted to forget, and to assure you that I regard the 

 close association of universities with the business world as 

 of enormous advantage to the universities. We have in 

 this, I believe, the true corrective of academic excesses, 

 the best stay for academic frailties ; and I believe the 

 good understanding and mutual respect which we may 

 hope to bring about between the leaders in the spheres of 

 labour and of learning will be extended rapidly through 

 the rank and file. 



I hope you will find in what I have said so far, the 

 evidence of a desire to acknowledge some of the short- 

 comings of the academic world. But I might well be 

 suspected of having had my head turned by the dignity 

 you have conferred upon me if I left you under the 

 impression that I thought the faults were wholly on one 

 side. In what remains of the time at my disposal I wish 

 to confide in you some of the difficulties of the situation 

 which arise from the other side. 



I believe that a very large number of business men go 

 wrong when they enter upon the consideration or criticism 

 of educational affairs by attempting to apply methods and 

 standards and principles borrowed from their own call- 

 ings, which, however excellent in their proper place, do 

 not apply, or at least do not apply in the same way, to 

 education. Let me remind you, in the very first place, 

 that you can, for example, prepare no balance-sheet of a 

 university. You know how much money comes into the 

 university chest and how much is paid out, but how 

 much a university costs or how much it earns no man can 

 discover. Supjx)se, for example, in my zeal to find employ- 

 ment for a student, I send you a young chemist who, by 

 his unrestrained ardour or incompetence, misleads you into 

 all kinds of futile extravagance, surely you would debit 

 that to the university. I do not doubt you would. Every 

 care is taken that such things are brought home to us. 

 Suppose, on the other hand, I send you someone, like a 

 former student I met last week, who, by what he had 

 learned here, increased the output of his employer's busi- 

 ness by 33 per cent. Should that not be credited to the 

 university if by someone's indiscretion you happened to 

 hear of it? I think so. In a business like ours it 

 transcends the powers of any accountant to effect an audit ; 

 you would need a whole secret service of educated spies. 

 You, individually, may give us a thousand pounds in the 

 hope of a return, but you, individually, may get nothing 

 In return — at least in this world — or you may get a re- 

 turn that you cannot trace to its source. No ; the essence 

 of university finance is collective investment. It is, to 

 some considerable extent, selective for a locality, and may 

 be made equally so for a single group of interests or 

 industries ; but, looking at a university as a whole, it is 

 national, or even international, in its financial ramifica- 

 tions. 



If I and many of my colleagues in this and other 

 universities are of some value to this country, I would 

 have you remember that the cost of our education has to 

 a quite considerable extent fallen upon the German tax- 

 payer. 



If I say that the students who have gone from our 

 chemical department are collectively earning half a million 

 a year for the firms who employ them, no one can con- 

 tradict me ; and I am tempted to affirm it positively as a 

 counterblast to those hasty financiers who look at our 

 accounts and raise their voice in lamentation over the 

 capital we lay down, without stopping to think of the 

 unrecorded dividends that accrue. 



I will take another thing. I think a good business man, 

 whilst anxious to progress and branch out, whilst ready 

 to take risks and go somewhat afield for promising ex- 

 pedients or appliances, is usually very careful not to lose 

 sight of the main current of his aiTairs. expecting to profi* 

 by deliberate methodical plans rather than by totally un- 

 expected accidents. 



The same is doubtless true within the pursuit of science 



