November 6, 19 19] 



NATURE 



259 



nical education and promote attention to scientific 

 method in all national affairs. 



Another fruit of the war is the awakened 

 interest in the subject of education on the part 

 of large employers, and especially of the import- 

 ance of scientific training and research'. A Com- 

 mittee of the Privy Council has been instituted 

 for the purpose of encouraging scientific and in- 

 dustrial research, with numerous sub-committees 

 dealing with various sections of industry and with 

 special products. Ten research associations have 

 been formed in respect of the chief industries, and 

 twenty-eight important researches have been under- 

 taken and aided from the fund of i,ooo,oooZ. placed 

 at the disposal of the Committee by Parliament. 



The Education Act of. 1918, which should be 

 made operative without delay, will, when it comes 

 into full effect, supply a far higher type of student 

 for our arts and industries. As showing the 

 advance within the last fifty years, there were at 

 the beginning of that period only four universities 

 which granted degrees in England and Wales, 

 one of which (London) was merely an examining 

 body. Now there are eleven duly incorporated, 

 with numerous colleges attached to them, many 

 of them chiefly concerned with technical training 

 and education. These universities are all well 



equipped and staffed for the teaching of science 

 and its applications, in the encouragement of 

 which this journal has borne no small share since 

 its foundation in 1869. 



Yet we have still far to go if we would keep 

 ourselves abreast of foreign educational enter- 

 prise. There were in 1914 twenty-one universities 

 in Germany, with 68,000 students, against 

 eighteen in the United Kingdom, with 27,000 

 students. There were also eleven technical high 

 schools in Germany, and sixteen other special 

 high schools for agriculture, mining, etc., with 

 21,000 students, as against 5000 in ours, and in 

 both age and standard of education at entrance 

 their students rank much higher than ours. The 

 State grants to universities and colleges in the 

 United Kingdom were about 500,000/., in Ger- 

 many nearly 2,000,000/., and in the United States 

 7,ooo,oooL, but in addition there was given nearly 

 4,000,000/. in private benefactions, as compared 

 with 200,000/. in the United Kingdom. To main- 

 tain our position as a leading nation in industry 

 and commerce, we need to increase the potenti- 

 ality of our manhood, to secure which will require 

 a much larger expenditure of money and effort. 

 ' We want accomplished leaders and a well- 

 educated and highly trained rank and file. 



THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH. 

 By Sir Richard A. Gregory. 



The great inventions of former ages were made in 

 countries where practical life, industry, and commerce 

 were most advanced; but the great inventions of the 

 last fifty years in chemistry and electricity and the 

 science of heat have been made in the scientific labora. 

 tory : the former were stimulated by practical wants, 

 the latter themselves produced new practical require- 

 ments, and created new spheres of labour, industry, 

 and commerce.- — J. T. Merz. 



HTHE recognition of the value of scientific re- 

 -'- search as a determining factor of progressive 

 development has been a common note of many 

 public utterances in recent years. Ministers and 

 labour leaders, manufacturers and men of letters, 

 are impressed with the results of experimental 

 inquiry and do homage to those who devote their 

 lives to it. Rarely, however, is the spirit which 

 prompts most scientific investigations understood. 

 ■'The quickening power of science, only he can 

 know from whose soul it gushes free." It seeks 

 not to use, but to know : its aim is not an engine 

 of war or a profitable invention, but the discovery 

 of new knowledge and the creation of new ideas 

 for all mankind. Researches which have practical 

 applications as their proximate or ultimate ends 

 are not likely in these days to need much advo- 

 cacy for their support, but those which have no 

 such aims must, like virtue, carry their own 

 reward with them. The standard of value to-day, 

 more than ever it was, is worldly riches, and if 

 all research had to be measured by it science 

 might gain the whole world, but it would lose its 

 own soul by so doing. 



NO. 2610, VOL. 104] 



[ When the State or the manufacturer makes 

 I provision for research, tangible results are ex- 

 : pected, and freedom to explore what, from a prac- 

 tical point of view, seem to be unpromising by- 

 i paths is discouraged. To a certain extent Mr. 

 Gladstone was right when in 1872 he termed the 

 intervention of the State as " interference " with 

 science, calculated to discourage individual exer- 

 tion and so obstruct discovery and progress. The 

 i view then taken was that the more science was 

 ! left to itself the better for it. We are far from 

 accepting this laisses faire principle entirely, but 

 there is some truth in it so far as purely scientific 

 i research is concerned. Creative genius never has 

 ' been, and never will be, willing to submit to 

 bureaucratic control or industrial needs, yet it dis- 

 covers the new lands in which rich fruits are 

 afterwards cultivated for the benefit of the world. 

 I While, therefore, we acknowledge with much 

 satisfaction the growing appreciation of research 

 as a means of promoting industrial advance, we 

 trust that the apparently useless and unpractical 

 pursuits of purely scientific workers will be re- 

 I garded as equally worthy of encouragement. 



When the publication of Nature was begun 

 j fifty years ago, experimental research received 

 i little or no support from the State. Astronomical 

 I work was carried on at the Royal Observatory, 

 Greenwich, and natural history objects were dis- 

 ' played at the British Museum, but there was 

 absolutely no provision in this country for the 

 1 support of experimental investigation of a modern 



