I90 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



and industry" (Nature, xxxiii, 1887, p. 265. Life, ii, 

 pp. 1 50-1). 



Part of a letter contributed to the Times (January 27) 

 was published by the Committee as admirably expressing 

 the purpose the Institute was meant to fulfil : — 



" That with which I did intend to express my strong sympathy, 

 was the intention which I thought I discerned to establish some- 

 thing which should play the same part in regard to the advance- 

 ment of industrial knowledge which has been played in regard 

 to science and learning in general, in these realms, by the Royal 

 Society and the universities. ... I pictured the Imperial 

 Institute to myself as a house of call for all those who are con- 

 cerned in the advancement of industry ; as a place in which the 

 home-keeping industrial could find out all he wants to know 

 about colonial industry and the colonist about home industry ; as 

 a sort of neutral ground on which the capitalist and the artizan 

 would be equally welcome ; as a centre of intercommunication 

 in which they might enter into friendly discussion of the 

 problems at issue between them, and, perchance, arrive at a 

 friendly solution of them. I imagined it a place in which the 

 fullest stores of industrial knowledge would be made accessible 

 to the public ; in which the higher questions of commerce and 

 industry would be systematically studied and elucidated ; and 

 where, as in an industrial university, the whole technical educa- 

 tion of the country might find its centre and crown. If I 

 earnestly desire to see such an institution created, it is not because 

 I think that or anything else will put an end to pauperism and 

 want — as somebody has absurdly suggested — but because I 

 believe it will supply a foundation for that scientific organization 

 of our industries which the changed conditions of the times 

 render indispensable to their prosperity. I do not think I am 

 far wrong in assuming that we are entering, indeed, have already 

 entered, upon the most serious struggle for existence to which 

 this country has ever been committed. The later years of the 

 century promise to see us embarked in an industrial war of far 

 more serious import than the military wars of its opening years. 

 On the east, the most systematically-instructed and best-informed 

 people in Europe are our competitors ; on the west, an energetic 

 offshoot of our own stock, grown bigger than its parent, enters upon 



