May 17, 191 7] 



NATURE 



lite. The land that produced Roger Bacon, Napier, 

 Gilbert, Harvey, Newton, James Watt, Jenner, Fara- 

 dav, Darwin, Kelvin, and Lister had to be shown by 

 the exponents of science prostituted that science was 

 nevertheless worth cultivating for its own sake. 



Possibly nothing less terrific than this irruption of 

 Teutonic brutality would have shaken the British race 

 out of its comfortable mental inertia. But having 

 been awakened, let us thankfully admit that our rulers 

 are now doing something towards recognising the all- 

 pervading importance of science in the national life. 

 Committees of various learned societies have been 

 formed ; the British Science Guild is taking action ; 

 the Royal CoUep'e of Science has recently presented 

 a petition to Lord Crewe to have men of science ade- 

 quately recognised ; and the Government from early 

 in the war has been consulting men of science on a 

 large number of economic problems. Quite recently 

 Sir J. J. Thomson has been elected chairman of an 

 important committee to study the f>05ition of science 

 in secondary schools and at the universities and its 

 relations to trades, industries, and professions which 

 depend on applied science. 



It cannot be denied that science, as science, has only 

 very recently been allowed to have an independent 

 existence in our national intellectual system. The 

 time is within the memory of some of us when the 

 attempt to introduce laboratory teaching into the 

 University of Oxford was met with a furious resist- 

 ance; and W'hen at length studies in practical chem- 

 istry were instituted they were alluded to as "stinks." 

 Histor}' was repeating itself ; for Leo Africanus, writ- 

 ing in the early part of the sixteenth century, thus 

 described the chemical society of the learned Arabians 

 at Fez : "There is a most stupid set of men who con- 

 taminate themselves with sulphur and other horrible 

 stinks." 



Science is of the very warp and woof of the web of 

 human existence ; ought we not to reckon with it 

 officially, as it is called? Has not the time come to 

 admit that science is as important as it really has 

 become ; for the existence of something and the official 

 admission that it exists are two different things? Why 

 should not science be taken under the care of a Cabinet 

 Minister? It is no longer vulgar, it is no longer 

 beneath the attention of the aristocratic intellect ; it is 

 of preponderating usefulness to the nation, and it is 

 malevolent only when divorced from common sense 

 and common moralit^' by the obsessions of self-hypno- 

 tised Prussians. It is within a verj* little of being 

 even a profession ! Why not recognise the pursuit of 

 something which is almost a respectable profession? 

 ^^'hy not have the official interests and the economic 

 aspects of science presided over by someone who 

 knows something about them? 



We need to make science the keynote of our public 

 service and university system, as Humboldt did early 

 in the nineteenth century, when Prussia was as yet 

 under the heel of Napoleon. The peremptory neces- 

 sity of better scientific organisation is apparent ; it is 

 now a question not only of our prosperity, but also of 

 our existence. 



Science, in short, must have a Department, a 

 Government office, before the public will fully accord 

 it its place of honour. We may regret that this sort 

 of thing has to be, but our regret will not change 

 public opinion ; and it appears to be part of the British 

 Constitution that nothing can be done, or should be 

 done, without a ven.' large bodv of public opinion 

 behind it. But the official recognition of science 

 cannot wait until the public has seen fit to render 

 "science the homaere it desers'es. To begin at the top, 

 let there be a Minister of Science and a Ministry of 

 Science with just as much prestige accorded it as the 



NO. 2481, VOL. 99] 



War Office, the Foreign Office, or the Home Office, 

 The duties of the Minister of Science would be prim- 

 arily to foster science in every* way possible, to further 

 its interests, to administer its affairs somewhat in the 

 manner in which the Board of Trade looks after trade, 

 and the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries after 

 agriculture and fisheries. 



By friendly and intelligent co-operation with the 

 universities, technical colleges, and the leaders 

 amongst the manufacturers, the relations of science 

 to the State could be adequately safeguarded; scien- 

 tific men would be known, encouraged, subsidised,, 

 promoted, rewarded, and pensioned. 



For why should State recognition, encouragement, 

 promotion, and rewarding be reserved for sailors, 

 soldiers, diplomatists, and lawyers? Why should it 

 be so entirely correct to be paid for legal opinion, and 

 such " bad form " to be remunerated for scientific 

 advice? Because, you may rely, the law is an 

 ancient, respectable profession, and science is so 

 modem that it is not a profession at all. But this 

 medieval state of affairs cannot go on indefinitely ; ic 

 was all very w-ell for the day when there was no science 

 to foster, and men quarrelled so much that lawyers 

 w-ere kept very busy, but now "nous avons change 

 tout cela " — or at least the earlier part of it. One 

 need not here and now draw up an exhaustive list 

 of the duties of the Minister of Science, but may 

 merely remark that much that falls under the super- 

 vision of the Home Office could be transferred to the 

 Department of Science. Had there been such a depart- 

 ment, Edward Jenner, for instance, would not have 

 had to struggle against every kind of obstacle and 

 misrepresentation for so long a time as he did, or have 

 had to wait so long as he had for the official recogni- 

 tion of what he had done for suffering humanity. Not 

 from his own private house, but from a Government 

 department would the vaccine have gone forth to 

 eager Europe. He truly called himself "The vaccine 

 clerk of the whole world." 



The first concern of the Science Office would be 

 the place of science in the schools of the Empire. And 

 here we come up against the still burning question of 

 the rival claims of science and the classics. Of 

 course, it ought to be perfectly possible to instruct 

 boys in as much of Greek and Latin as would make 

 them know the origin of^the words in English derived 

 from those languages, without necessarily making the 

 boys read entire Greek and Latin authors in the ori- 

 ginal. The practice in the past of educating boys as 

 though they were all going to be teachers of the 

 classics is analogous to the teaching of physiology to- 

 niedical students as though they were all going to be. 

 professional physiologists. 



Owing to our national physiological momentum, 

 the teaching of bovs has been continued on the same 

 lines as those laid down by the educationists of the 

 Revival of Learning in the sixteenth centur\'. What 

 Erasmus. Linacre, and Dean Colet planned was ad- 

 mirable for the day when America and printing had 

 only just been discovered, but is possibly not so wel| 

 adapted to the countrv which lights its cities by electric 

 energy, speaks to America without wires, flies in high 

 heaven like the eagle, and descends to the abyss like 

 a sea monster. 



The Science Office will see to it that science receives 

 official recognition in all entrance examinations what- 

 soever, and that it is not handicapped by receiving 

 fewer marks than the classics or any other subject. 

 Science must have its place in the curriculum, not on 

 sufferance or by-your-leave, but by right and in virtue 

 of its inherent dignitv and usefulness. Science cannot 

 any longer be the under-fed maid-of-all-work ; Science 

 is the queen herself coming into her kingdom. 



