NA TURE 



217 



THURSDAY, JULY 7, 1887. 



PROFESSOR TYNDALL AND THE 

 SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT. 

 '"P'HE complimentary banquet to Prof. Tyndall, to 

 -I- which reference has more than once been made in 

 these columns, is described in detail elsewhere. We 

 cannot, however, allow an event of so much interest, 

 and which is, we believe, unique in the history of science 

 in this country, to pass without comment. 



Many notable gatherings have taken place in Willis's 

 Rooms, but we question if English science has ever been 

 more completely represented than at the " Tyndall 

 Dinner." The President of the Royal Society was in the 

 chair. The seven Vice-Chairmen were Presidents of the 

 most important scientific Societies. The tables were 

 crowded with men whose names are known wherever 

 Nature is studied. 



No every-day motive would suffice to bring together 

 such an assembly, and it is not every day that we have an 

 opportunity of doing honour to a life-work such as that of 

 Prof. Tyndall. Others will rank beside or above him as 

 investigators, but in the promotion of the great scientific 

 movement of the last fifty years he has played a part 

 second to none. The English people are a determined 

 but somewhat slow-witted race, and it has been no easy 

 task to convince them that a new era — that of science — 

 was dawning. They have been content to pride them- 

 selves on industrial successes due for the most part to 

 isolated efTorts of genius, which was hampered by un- 

 necessary difficulties, and which cannot be produced at 

 will. They were long in seeing, they do not yet fully see, 

 that our industrial position can only be maintained if 

 armies of well-equipped followers are ready to seize the 

 ground which the leaders win. 



There is, however, a still harder lesson to learn. The 

 industrial application of a scientific principle — vitally 

 important to the well-being of the people as that applica- 

 tion may be — requires nevertheless a lower form of intel- 

 lectual energy than the discovery of the principle itself. 

 The triumphs of applied science, of the physician, the 

 engineer, the telegraphist, are readily " understanded of 

 the people." The research laboratory, on the other hand, 

 is open to few. The flash of genius which has wrung a 

 fresh secret from Nature can only be fully appreciated by 

 those who are intellectually competent to understand the 

 difficulty and the success. And yet, if a widespread 

 knowledge of science was to be, as it is, an essential con- 

 dition of national well-being, it was absolutely necessary 

 that the people should know something of, and be in 

 some sort in sympathy with, the methods and conditions of 

 scientific thought. 



In supplying this need, Prof. Tyndall's greatest work 

 has been done. Uniting scientific eminence of no 

 ordinary kind with extraordinary gifts of exposition, 

 he has, by his lectures and his books, brought the 

 democracy into touch with scientific research. In 

 dozens of lecture-rooms experiments devised by him 

 are proving that a living science is a nobler instrument 

 of education than a dead language. In hundreds of 

 libraries his nervous English is convincing men of the 

 Vol. XXXVI.— No. 923. 



value of a career like Faraday's, and teaching them to 

 appreciate, if they cannot always in detail follow, the 

 methods by which the victories of science are won. He 

 has done perhaps more than any other living man to 

 compel those who regard knowledge as valuable only in 

 so far as it is immediately useful, to admit that the seed 

 which is sown in the laboratory often produces the most 

 abundant harvest in the workshop, and that a desire for 

 knowledge is the mother of inventions which necessity 

 could never have brought to the birth. 



Such has been Prof. Tyndall's work ; and yet we ven- 

 ture to think that among those who met in Willis's 

 Rooms a deeper feeling was aroused than admiration for 

 an eminent worker and a useful career. 



Many of the greatest masters both of the moral and 

 intellectual life have sought the attainment of their 

 highest ideals in a more or less complete withdrawal 

 from society, and it may well be that some natures can 

 best achieve in seclusion the concentration which a 

 supreme effort demands. 



But although the scientific movement of to- day may 

 receive its highest inspirations from men who, like Dar- 

 win and Joule, have worked in self-imposed retirement, 

 its distinguishing characteristic is that it is sweeping 

 along with it all classes and all opinions. It is a new 

 habit of thought in the light of which the foundations of 

 our educational, industrial, and political systems are 

 being reconsidered. It is a new and deliberate attempt 

 to put into practice the belief that "' the sovereignty of 

 man lieth hid in knowledge, wherein many things are 

 reserved which kings with their treasures cannot buy, 

 nor with their force command ; their spials and intelli- 

 gencers can give no news of them ; their seamen and 

 discoverers cannot sail where they grow." 



Thus it has come to pass that science has gathered 

 round it a crowd of workers, engaged in very various 

 tasks, but all of whom would be ready to admit that the 

 cardinal principle of the movement in which they take 

 part is the investigation of truth for truth's sake alone. 

 They may be professors or manufacturers, soldiers or 

 physicians. If only they are imbued with the desire to 

 penetrate a little further into the mysteries which 

 surround us, if only they are willing and able to add 

 something to the sum of human knowledge, they are 

 scientific men. 



In part this army is organized. There is in England 

 no Academy of Literature. The Academy of Arts, it is 

 admitted, needs reform. The principal scientific Socie- 

 ties, however, with the Royal Society at their head, 

 perform the duties of an Academyof Science to the general 

 satisfaction. No human institution is perfect, but it may 

 be fairly said that they set in their Transactions a high 

 standard of scientific work, and that their judgment, 

 whether of men or of investigations, is seldom chal- 

 lenged. 



In spite of this advantage, neither the outside world 

 nor scientific men themselves have as yet sufficiently 

 realized that these Societies constitute a great guild of 

 that learning which is the most powerful and the most 

 characteristic influence of our age. 



On an occasion such as the Tyndall Dinner this 

 realization is quickened. The curious magnetic influence 

 of numbers is fielt. Minor dififerences disappear in the 



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