Introduction 



still protests against the first as "a hybrid word/' 

 and therefore, presumably, "a pseudo-science," 

 or plaintively asks the meaning of the second. 

 That the countrymen of Spencer are now the 

 latest in the world, even generally, to know the 

 meaning of " synthesis," much less to see the 

 need for any, is at this moment clear to all other 

 peoples, literally from Japan (if not even China) 

 to Peru. 



It is time, then, to be discussing the place of 

 Science, ideal or other, and this not only in 

 thought but in affairs. We have heard much of 

 il efficiency " of late years ; some even begin to 

 consider how we are to get it ; we even begin to 

 take this and that measure in hopes of obtain- 

 ing it witness the praiseworthy initiative of what 

 seems at present our foremost group of Educa- 

 tionists financier, peer, bureaucrat and barrister 

 to enlarge the school of mines in Piccadilly into a 

 Charlottenburg at South Kensington. It is some- 

 thing to be informed of the scientific ideals of 

 Germany, especially by any who may have in- 

 formed themselves less than a century ago ; and 

 it may be necessary for us to excavate the vastest 

 labyrinth of specialist laboratories beneath the 

 most confused of museums in order to justify 

 the demand for some intelligible rearrangement 

 of the whole, elsewhere. 



But it is not yet the time for such a correla- 

 tion of studies, such reorganisation of culture, 

 such University of the future. Our Universities 

 must still linger for a season upon their various 



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