S^pt. i6, 1875J 



NATURE 



439 



Great Britain. All who are ambitious that our country should 

 bear a prominent part in contributing to the common stock of 

 knowledge, and all who know the effect upon individual character 

 and happiness of the habit and occupation of scientific inquiry, 

 must regret our backwardness in this respect. The immediate 

 cause is easily found. It is not that English workers are less 

 inventive or industrious than their fellows across the Channel, 

 but that their number is exceedingly small. How comes it that 

 in a country which abounds in rich and leisurely men and women 

 — for neither the reason of the case, nor the jealousy of the 

 dominant sex, nor partial legislation excludes women from 

 sharing this pursuit with men — there are so few who seek the 

 excitement and delights of chemical inquiry ? Moralists tell us 

 that the reason why some men are content with the pleasures of 

 eating and drinking and the like is, that they have never had 

 experience of the greater pleasure which the exercise of the 

 intelligence affords. I am not about to represent it as the moral 

 duty of those who have means and leisure to cultivate chemistry 

 or any branch of science ; but no taste for a pursuit can be deve- 

 loped in the absence of any knowledge of its nature. A taste 

 for chemistry is often spoken of as a peculiar bias with which 

 certain men are born. No doubt there are differences in natural 

 aptitudes and tastes, but the chief reason why it is so rare for 

 men of leisure to addict themselves to scientific pursuits is, that 

 so few boys and young men have had experience of the pleasure 

 which they bring. Much has been done during the last twenty 

 years, both at the Universities and at the Public Schools, to 

 provide for the teaching of science. To speak of v/hat I know 

 best, the University of Oxford has made liberal provision for the 

 teaching of science, and for its recognition among the studies 

 requisite for a degree ; nor have the several colleges been back- 

 ward in allotting scholarships and fellowships as soon as and 

 whenever they had reason to believe that those elected for pro- 

 ficiency in science would be men equal in intellectual calibre to 

 those elected for proficiency in classics or mathematics. But the 

 result is somewhat disappointing, and under a free-trade system 

 science has failed to attract more than a small percentage of 

 University students. Excellent lectures are delivered by the 

 professors to scanty audiences, and the great bulk of those edu- 

 cated at the University receive no more tincture of science than 

 their predecessors did twenty years ago. 



The recognition of science among the subjects of University 

 examinations is by no means an unmixed advantage to those 

 concerned. Examinations have played and will continue to play 

 a useful part in directing and stimiilating study, and in securing 

 the distribution of rewards according to merit ; but they produce 

 in the student, as has often been pointed out, a habit of looking 

 to success in examination as the end of his studies. This habit 

 of mind is peculiarly alien to the true spirit of scientific work. 

 Only such knowledge is valued as is likely to be producible at 

 the appointed time. Whether a theory is consistent or true is 

 immaterial, provided it is probable, that is to say, advanced by 

 some author whose authority an examiner would recognise. All 

 incidental observations and experimental inquiry lying outside 

 the regular laboratory course, which are the natural beginnings 

 of original work, must be eschewed as trespassing on the time 

 needed for preparation. The examination comes; the University 

 career is at an end ; and the student departs, perhaps with 

 a considerable knowledge of scientific facts and thecnries, 

 but without having experienced the pleasure, still so easily 

 gained in our young science of chemistry, of adding one new fact 

 to the pile of knowledge, and, it may he, with little more inclina- 

 tion to engage in such pursuit than have most of his contempo- 

 raries to continue the study of Aristotle or Livy. 



However, examinations have their strong side, to which I 

 have referred, as well as their weak side ; and although it is the 

 natural desire of a teacher to see his more promising pupils con- 

 tributing to the science with whose principles and methods they 

 have laboured to become acquainted, the younger, like the elder 

 branches of knowledge, must be content to serve as instruments 

 for developing men's minds. Chemistry can only claim a place 

 m i;eneral education if its study serves, not to make men che- 

 )insts, but to help in making them intelligent and well-informed, 

 ll it is found to serve this purpose well, the number of chemical 

 students at the Universities ought to increase ; and if the number 

 increases, no rigour of the examination system will prevent one 

 or two, perhaps, in every year adopting chemistry as the pursuit 

 of their lives. But the Universities have little power to deter- 

 mine what number of students shall follow any particular line of 

 study. "With certain reserves in favour of classics and mathe- 



matics, their system is that of free- trade. Young men of eighteen 

 or nineteen have tastes already formed, some for the studies 

 which were put before them at school, in which, perhaps, they 

 are already proficient and have been already successful, some for 

 games and good fellowship. It is, from the nature of the case, 

 with the masters of schools that the resnonsibility rests of fixing 

 the position of science in education. During the last ten years 

 provision has been made at most of the larger schools for the 

 teaching of some branches of science ; and those who recall the 

 conservatism of schoolboys, and their consequent prejudice in 

 favour of the older studies, will understand a part of the diffi- 

 culties which have had to be encountered. The main and insur- 

 mountable difficulty is what I may call the impenetrability of 

 studies. A new subject cannot be brought in without displacing 

 in part those to which the school-hours have been allotted. It 

 is the same difficulty which occurs again and again in human 

 life. There are so many things which it would be well to know 

 and well to follow ; but life, like school-time, is too short for all. 

 From the educational phase of this diflSculty the natural difference 

 of tastes and aptitudes provides in some degree a way of escape. 

 I think that wherever a school can afford appliances for the 

 teaching, of chemistry, all the boys should pass through the 

 hands of the teacher of this subject. Two or three hours a week 

 during one school-year would be sufficient to enable the teacher 

 to judge what pupils were most promising. There may be 

 instances to the contrary, but I no not think it likely that any 

 boy who attended chemical lectures for a year without becoming 

 interested in the subject would ever pursue it afterwards with 

 success. Suppose that out of one hundred boys who have gone 

 through this course, five are selected as having shown more intel- 

 ligence or interest than the rest ; they should be permitted to 

 give a considerable part of their time, while still at school, to 

 studying science without suffering loss of position in the school, 

 or forfeiting the chance of scholarships or prizes. If any such 

 system is possible and were generally adopted, each school send- 

 ing annually to the Universities, or other institutions for the 

 education of young men, its small contribution of scientific 

 students, the professor's lecture-rooms and laboratories would be 

 filled with young men who had already learnt the rudiments of 

 science. Laboratories of research as well as of elementary in- 

 struction would find a place at the English Universities, and the 

 reproach of barrenness would be rolled away. 



Some of the defects or difficulties to which I have adverted 

 are perhaps peculiar to our older schools and universities. The 

 introduction of the study of natural science has borne earlier fruit 

 in schools whose celebrity is of more recent date, such as the 

 excellent college in this neighbourhood. Oxford and Cambridge 

 ought to possess, but are far from possessing, such laboratories 

 as have lately been built at the Owens College, Manchester. It 

 is proposed to constitute in this city a College of Science and 

 Literature, similar to Owens College and in connection with two 

 of the Oxford colleges. The scheme set forth by its promoters 

 appears thoroughly wise and well-considered, and all who are 

 interested in scientific education must wish it success. 



I have placed first among the modes in which science, and in 

 particular chemical science, may be advanced, the assignment to 

 it of a more prominent and honoured place in education ; but 

 owing, as I do, my own scientific calling and opportunities of 

 work to a bequest made to Christ Church by Dr. Matthew Lee 

 more than a hundred years ago, I cannot forget or disbelieve in 

 the influence of endowments. 



I have spoken of the leisurely class in this country as that to 

 which scientific chemistry must look for its votaries. In our 

 social conditions and in the absence of endowments it is hard to 

 see where else they can be found. Men who have their liveli- 

 hood to make cannot afford to spend money, and still less to 

 bestow their time and energy, on the luxury of scientific inquiry. 

 Even if they have the opportunity of earning their livelihood by 

 scientific teaching, and with it the command of laboratory and 

 apparatus, no leisure may remain to them for original work, and 

 the impulse to such work (often, it must be admitted, of a feeble 

 constitution) is starved in the midst of plenty. The application 

 of endowments to the promotion of original research is a difficult 

 question. I am inclined to think that posts, constituted chiefly 

 with this object, should be attached in every case to some educa- 

 tional body, and should have light educational duties assigned to 

 them. The multiplication of such posts in connection with the 

 many colleges and schools in this country, where there is some 

 small demand for chemical teaching, with the provision in each 

 case of a sufficient laboratory and means of work, would probably 



