NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 117 



devoted to more or less abstract and *' unpractical" pur- 

 suits, I am insensible to the weight which ought to be 

 attached to that which has been said to be the English con- 

 ception of Paradise — namely, "getting on." I look upon 

 it, that "getting on" is a very important matter indeed. I 

 do not mean merely for the sake of the coarse and tangible 

 results of success, but because humanity is so constituted 

 that a vast number of us would never be impelled to those 

 stretches of exertion which make us wiser and more capable 

 men, if it were not for the absolute necessity of putting on 

 our faculties all the strain they will bear, for the purpose of 

 "getting on" in the most practical sense. 



Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a 

 means of getting on is indubitable. There are hardly any 

 of our trades, except the merely huckstering ones, in which 

 some knowledge of science may not be directly profitable to 

 the pursuer of that occupation. As industry attains higher 

 stages of its development, as its processes become more 

 complicated and refined, and competition more keen, the 

 sciences are dragged in, one by one, to take their share in 

 the fray; and he who can best avail himself of their help is 

 the man who will come out uppermost in that struggle for 

 existence, which goes on as fiercely beneath the smooth 

 surface of modern society, as among the wild inhabitants 

 of the woods. 



But in addition to the bearing of science on ordinary 

 practical life, let me direct your attention to its immense 

 influence on several of the professions. I ask any one who 

 has adopted the calling of an engineer, how much time he 

 lost when he left school, because he had to devote himself 

 to pursuits which were absolutely novel and strange, and of 

 which he had not obtained the remotest conception from 

 his instructors? He had to familiarise himself with ideas 



