2 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



Several letters refer to the proposal — it was the 

 Jubilee year — to commemorate the occasion by the 

 establishment of the Imperial Institute. To this he 

 gladly gave his support; not indeed to the merely 

 social side ; but in the opportunity of organising the 

 practical applications of science to industry he saw 

 the key to success in the industrial war of the future. 

 Seconding the resolution proposed by Lord Rothschild 

 at the Mansion House meeting on January 12, he 

 spoke of the relation of industry to science — the two 

 great developments of this century. Formerly 

 practical men looked askance at science, " but within 

 the last thirty years, more particularly," continues 

 the report in Nature (vol. xxxiii. p. 265) " that state 

 of things had entirely changed. There began in the 

 first place a slight flirtation between science and 

 industry, and that flirtation had grown into an 

 intimacy, he might almost say courtship, until those 

 who watched the signs of the times saw that it was 

 high time that the young people married and set up 

 an establishment for themselves. This great scheme, 

 from his point of view, was the public and ceremonial 

 marriage of science and industry." 



Proceeding to speak of the contrast between 

 militarism and industrialism, he asked whether, after 

 all, modern industry was not war under the forms of 

 peace. The diff'erence was the difference between 

 modern and ancient war, consisting in the use of 

 scientific weapons, of organisation and information. 

 The country, he concluded, had dropped astern in 



