October i, 19 14] 



NATURE 



127 



M to pass an examination, but after the examination he 

 forgets what he was supposed to have learnt. 



The present system of education is to be condemned 

 for other reasons. It is exasperating that all the most 

 important, the most brilliant, the most expensively 

 educated people in England, our poets and novelists, 

 our legislators and lawyers, our soldiers and sailors, 

 our great manufacturers and merchants, our clergy- 

 men and schoolmasters, are quite ignorant of natural 

 science ; and it may almost be said that in spite* of 

 these clever ignorant men, and men like them in other 

 countries, through the agency of scientific men, all 

 the conditions of civilisation are being transformed. 

 I do not think that a fact of this kind would have been 

 neglected by the philosophers of Greece (who scorned 

 to know any other language than their own) or the 

 learned men of Rome, but when some of us direct 

 attention to it and its neglect by modern philosophers 

 we are sneered at as Philistines. It is a curious kind 

 of culture which scorns the lessons of history, the 

 study of man in his relation to nature, the study ot 

 the enormous new forces which are now affecting the 

 relations of nations to one another. How many of 

 our rulers know the astounding fact that the cost of 

 the most unskilled work done by man costs looo times 

 as much as when that work is done by a steam- 

 engine? Hence it is that the steam-engine has given 

 means for leisure and high culture, yes, and low 

 culture and decadence, to hundreds of people instead 

 of units. And the steam engine enables rulers to spend 

 100 times as much money on soldiers and sailors and 

 ships and munitions of war as they did 200 years ago. 

 The university man thinks that he can get some 

 : knowledge of science by reading, but without labora- 

 torv study he is like the man who said "barley " when 

 he wanted to escape from the robbers' cave and ought 

 to have said " sesame." Do you know the ballad 

 about Count Arnaldos, who envied the old helmsman 

 his weird and wondrous powers? 



" Would'st thou,' thus the helmsman answered, 

 " Learn the sec-et of the sea "r 

 Onlv those tf at brave its dangers 

 Comprehend its mastery. ' 



I know that the ordinary university man thinks, like 

 the wistful Count, that he can get all things easily 

 or by mere reading. But, in truth, to read the 

 " Origin of Species," or treatises on astronomy or 

 physics or chemistrv, is a misleading performance 

 unless the reader brings to the study that kind of 

 mind which has been developed already by his own 

 observation and experiment. 



The university man, ignorant of science, be- 

 comes a ruler of our great nation, his duty during 

 war and peace being that of a scientific administrator, 

 and without turning a hair he fraudulently accepts 

 this important duty for which he is utterly unfit. The 

 gods must surely laugh when they see these rulers of 

 ours gibing at scientific things, giving important posts 

 to non-scientific men who scorn and obstruct the scien- 

 tific men who are under their orders. If Oxford 

 scholars were merely like so many monks in their 

 monastery, living the lives and following the studies 

 which they love, I would say nothing. The revenues 

 so used up are, I think, of no great importance to 

 the country', and busy men elsewhere can only be 

 benefited in knowing that at Oxford and Cambridge 

 there are these lovelv lamaseries where men are living 

 in serene air apart from the struggles of the world, 

 living what thev think to be the higher kind of life, 

 that of the amateur copying the lives of the scholars 

 of Constantinople before they were so mercifully scat- 

 tered in 14-;'^, copying the meditative ways of the 

 divines and hermits of the fourth and fifth centuries. 

 Unfortunately the Oxford hermits have by a series of 

 accidents become the rulers of the greatest Empire 



NO. 2344, VOL. 94] 



that the earth has ever seen, and it is very obvious 

 indeed through many other things than the starting 

 of South African wars that they are unfit for their job. 



If our rulers were like savage chiefs they might pos- 

 sibly give equal chances to candidates for posts ; but 

 unfortunately it is as if our leaders possessed great 

 negative knowledge of natural science, and as if a 

 man's chances of being appointed to a scientific post 

 or of having his advice listened to were in inverse 

 proportion to his scientific qualifications. Scientific 

 men look around them and see that everything is 

 wrong in the present arrangements, but they also see 

 that it is useless to give advice which cannot be under- 

 stood by our rulers. And, indeed, I may say that 

 when by accident a scientific man is appointed on a 

 committee there is a negative inducement for him to 

 do anything. 



Many men enter the Services bv examination, and it 

 is always through cramming that they pass. In some 

 cases the examination is supposed to be in science. 

 In truth, the scientific habit of thought, the real 

 study of science, the very fitness of a boy for entrance 

 to the service, would unfit him for passing these 

 abominable unscientific examinations. For some army 

 posts, further scientific food is provided by the Govern- 

 ment for the classical or modern langiaage or science 

 dummies after they enter the Service. If one wishes 

 to hear how evil this system of pretended education 

 is, let him ask the opinion of some of the professors 

 who are condemned to help in carrying it out. The 

 whole system is foolishness from top to bottom, and 

 the men prepared by the system cannot see how 

 abominable it is, even when they are afterwards trying 

 to improve it ; well-mannered mediocrity is everjwhere 

 successful and reproduces itself. 



I have been dwelling upon the consequences of 

 letting aristocratic university men who are to be rulers 

 of the country have an education which involves na 

 study of natural science. Besides these men we have 

 a larger number of middle-class men who will succeed 

 their fathers in the management, not merely of landed 

 estates, but of much more valuable estates in the 

 manufacture and distribution of things. With them- 

 there is the same contempt for books, for learning, 

 and the same absence, not merely of knowledge and 

 of natural science, but of those scientific habits of 

 thought and methods of approaching problems which 

 experimental research tends to produce. These men 

 become the owners of factories the spirit of which ought 

 to be scientific research ; the competing factories in 

 Germany, France, and .\merica are run by men of 

 scientific method, but our owners discourage reform in 

 every possible way. The rule of thumb of their fathers, 

 and grandfathers is good enough for them. Their 

 factories are so badly arranged that the works cost 

 of any manufacture is twice what it ought to be and 

 the time taken is twice as great. They take eagerly 

 to all sorts of quack remedies for bad trade; they are- 

 the easy victims of fraudulent persons. These are the 

 men who discourage all education in the people em- 

 ploved by them, managers, foremen, and workmen. 

 They are what I call unskilled workmen — that is, un- 

 skilled owners of works —and it is the university and 

 the whole system of their education which is to blame 

 for their unskilfulness. It is astounding how quickly 

 unskilled owners of works are being eliminated, but 

 there is a new crop of them everv year. The want of 

 education of these men is verv harmful to the country-. 



But I get too angry when I think of what our uni- 

 versities might do in the great world of natural science 

 and of the futility of almost all their studies. .And 

 this anger is greater when I think that the universities 

 rule the schools. The general higher education of the 

 community is being altogether neglected, the general 

 culture of professional men is being neglected ; and in 



